Swordbound

Visual Novel | Gamejam | 2025

Bound for centuries to be wielded by heroes, you are a sentient blade that has grown weary of the endless cycle. One day another hero approaches, and something unexpected happens. In this visual novel you can sway your wielder through dialogue, deciding whether to manipulate him for your own ends or aid him on his quest.

The prototype of the game works only on desktop devices.

Task

Swordbound was created for the 16th Pirate Software Game Jam, which challenged participants to explore the theme “You Are The Weapon.” As part of the submission, we also delivered a Game Design Document.

Idea

We started by gathering inspiration and brainstorming ideas, writing down everything that came to mind, not worrying about whether it was feasible or stupid, which encouraged ideas to flow freely.

We ranked these ideas and ended up with two concepts we wanted to explore further. One was the idea that the player is a sentient weapon. The other played with the concept of biological weapons, such as viruses.

We discussed these ideas and decided that we liked the sentient weapon concept more. Biological weapons were also interesting, but we felt that this idea had been explored more often before, for example in games like "Plague Inc". Because of this, we doubled down on our selected idea. We decided to create a visual novel where the player is a sentient sword and can influence their wielder’s decisions. Since our time was limited, we had to set a clear and focused goal to get our idea across. We wanted to create a short introduction and just enough content to establish the storyline and allow the player to make one meaningful decision.

Writing

We split up the work at this point. While my jam partner was creating a dialogue system, I fleshed out the dialogue and started thinking about which assets we needed for the visuals and sounds.

Art & Animaition

After I was done with the planning, I started creating the assets. Most importantly, we needed a background where the scene would take place and characters for the sword, the thug, and the hero. After that, I created the animations, added sound, and designed the visuals for the menu and the thumbnail.

Final Stretch

Finally, we brought everything together in the engine and managed to publish before the deadline. It was tough, but we learned a lot. Coordinating the work was challenging, and the workload was heavier on the art side. This was made more difficult because my jam partner was stronger on the coding side and couldn’t help as much with the art.

Credits

Programming: XCain

Art: Gugusali (me)
Music by its_tigri from Pixabay