How to play Hellish Quart online?

1. Run the game and press Shift+TAB

2. Click on INVITE ANYONE TO PLAY button in your friends list.

Once the other player acceps your invitation - you are now playing online.

Note that, as always with online play, a fast cable internet connection is preferred over WiFi.

The other player doesn’t have to own the game. The other player doesn’t even have to own a PC. A gamepad and any device that can run Steam client or the Steam Link app (a TV or a smartphone) is enough.

You also don’t have to have the other person in your Steam Friends List. Click “Invite a Guest” to generate a link to your game session, and send this link to anyone to join when they click this link.

If you want to play with strangers or find other Hellish Quart players, you can go to Hellish Quart Community Discord.

You can start your game, generate a link, and post it there, so people can join your session, or click on a link that someone else posted.

Will you add native online multiplayer mode?

Hellish Quart has a local 2-player functionality and doesn't have an online mode built in. This is marked in the game description. I addressed the requests for adding a native online mode in various posts and videos, and explained why I can't promise it can be done, I'll sum it up here:

- We have a particular set of skills: 3D animation, mocap acting, scripting gameplay, sword fighting. Those are a rare combo that allowed us to make a quite realistic sword fighting game. But we have zero knowledge of programming online netcode, unfortunately.

- Talks with other devs, publishers, and our own research basically say that Unity physics-based simulation games are impossible to sync online, because they are non-deterministic. Physics-based games are usually local. So far, it seems it just can't be done using the stock Unity engine, and we’re definitely not ready to code our own game engine.

- We don't have employees or infrastructure to run a live service game, we don't have resources to moderate the community, run anti-cheat programs, servers, nor do we want to do such things. We just want to make cool sword fighting.

- Hellish Quart is a small indie game. For you to be able to find a match in an online game, there always has to be a very high number of people playing at the same time. Even if Hellish Quart would have like 1000 people playing it online at the premiere, this will taper off to 100, 20, and then 5 in less than a month - and there goes the online mode, just like in all those hundreds of dead indie online games. Then we will have to stop paying for the server eventually, and we end up with a truly dead forever game.

- Instead of trying to run a live service online game as tiny indie devs working from home, we want to make a cool single-player story mode. This way, even in 20 years, the game will be worth playing, even if just for the story. We are working on this right now and hope to bring you the first adventure in the next big update.

- even if we somehow managed to implement a native online mode, it is still just a small niche indie game. Most likely Steam Remote and Parsec would provide a vastly better and more stable online experience than our hypothetical, tiny, indie-budget server. We see this in countless small online games, that run way better on Steam Remote than on their own servers.

We realize that quite a few players don't care about story modes, and they just want to beat up random opponents online, but, because of the reasons above, we want to provide more fun ways to enjoy the game solo or locally. But we hear you, native online would be very good to have, and if it is ever possible, we will try to implement it. We just don't know how yet, and if it is even possible.

And for all the people who want to play the game online right now, it is easily possible by using Steam Remote Play Together. Press Shift+Tab in the game and invite any friend to join your session, or copy the link to your session and send it to anyone - the person doesn't even have to have Steam to play with you.

We will keep researching and trying to find a viable way to eventually implement a native online mode, but we can't promise it will happen.

Will there be a Story Mode? When?

Yes, we are working on the Story Mode right now. We release the character stories in chapters (so the updates with new content can happen often). The first part of the Story for Jacek Dydynski is already released. Here’s a quick look:

Is Hellish Quart a finished game? Will there be more features?

Hellish Quart is not finished yet, and currently is in Early Access. New features and story episodes are being added often.

Will Hellish Quart release on consoles?

We would like to release the game on consoles after we finish it. We need to first go out of the Early Access to full release, and only then port the game to consoles.

I’m having technical problems with the game. Where can I get help?

In the troubleshooting section, here (link).

Can we have manual blocking with a button, or sword swinging using a mouse pointer, or FPP VR, or massive battles with hundreds of soldiers, etc.

All this sounds awesome, but Hellish Quart’s fighting system is already designed, matured, and crystallized. It’s a fighting game with a classic side-view, and its mechanics and design are what they are. All those ideas are great and maybe I will use them in my next games.

No, but really, so maybe just blocking with a button instead of autoguard?

Hellish Quart is more like Tekken (don’t attack to block), and less like Mortal Kombat (hold block button). The passive blocking mechanic is what we grew up with playing Tekken. It doesn’t require yet another button and we prefer it.

In real life, when the fight starts, the ref says “En garde!” and fencers literally assume a guard stance. They have the guard positions imprinted in their muscle memory, and by default, they are always guarding. Even completely untrained people instinctively cover lines to block an incoming sword attack. There’s pretty much never a situation, where someone doesn’t react to an incoming sword attack. Therefore - a passive block fits better than a block button. It illustrates the almost involuntary reaction to an opponent taking a swing at you.

But of course, if you want your character to stop guarding on purpose, you can do that with a simple special move.

Is Hellish quart based on real historical characters or events?

Hellish Quart is historical fiction.

Most of the characters in the game are inspired by real, historical characters that lived in the past, and most of the plot is loosely based on actual historical events, but we took the artistic liberty to change and mix the stories to create a unique, fictional, new plot.

For example, there really was a Black starosta [something like a town mayor/sheriff] in Poland in 1635 named Alexander Dynis. But we don’t know what he looked like or what his life was like before becoming a starosta. We also know that Jacek Dydynski existed, what he did for a living and when he died - but stories told about him in Hellish Quart, though plausible, are simply made up.

How many developers work on Hellish Quart?

Is it really just two people?

Two devs work full time (all the way from the very beginning).

The idea for the game and it’s design is ours. Jakub designs the game, makes the animations, mocaps, cutscenes, all the coding, meshing, character modeling, and AudioFX. Kate does everything related to production as well as historical clothes 3D scanning and mocap acting.

But did we make this game alone, on our own, and nobody else helped?

We regularly work with Adam, who composes and produces music for Hellish Quart, and the game’s characters and story were created by Jacek.

Voiceovers for the characters are performed by various actors and produced by Roboto.

Fencing lessons are provided by a fencing school, and many motion capture animations are performed by other HEMA practitioners.

Many graphics in the game are also not drawn by our duo - the majority of them were taken from old fencing manuals and were drawn by other artists, more than four hundred years ago.

Unity engine is made by Unity, all credit for making a great engine goes to them.

We use tons of royalty-free Assets and plugins made by various other creators. We did not model every tree and rock in the game.

And finally, you, the Early Access Players, provided tons of feedback and bug reports, as well as gave awesome ideas which, in many cases, ended up in the game, even though they were not even planned. Thank you!

So, no, we did not create every aspect of this game ourselves, even though only Kate and I are working on the game every day. A lot of people contributed.

Will you add samurai? Or vikings?

Who knows, a DLC, or even a remaster, after the game is fully finished, is not out of the question.

Will there be a playable tutorial in the game?

A temporary, but playable interactive tutorial is already in the game. The "real” tutorial will be incorporated into the Main Story as a part of the plot.

What is the best way to win duels? Are there some fencing tutorials?

Check out this video about fencing tactics in Hellish Quart!

Some of the character’s moves are not exactly like in the fencing manuals. Is this a mistake?

We try to capture a look and feel of a HEMA duel / tounament, instead of making characters look like they were doing a “dry” fencing drill.

When you watch a ranked tournament of any combat sport, you can easily notice that fighters move very differently than ordered by the “proper form from the book”. Whether it’s HEMA, fencing, boxing, or MMA, every fighter moves differently, creatively. Fighters have their strengths and weaknesses, each fighter always leaves some sort of openings - that’s how they eventually get defeated. Many times we see fighters do crazy stuff, that is not in the manual, and that can surprise the opponent and end the fight.

Hellish Quart tries to capture that chaotic nature of a real fight and gives each fencer strong and weak sides of the moveset. It’s the Player’s role to recognize that to take advantage over opponents.

How long until you finally finish the game?

The original plan, that was announced on Early Access premiere, was to have 12 characters (we currently have 14, and 24 are planned), 12 arenas (we have 20 now, and more are coming), there was no HEMA mode, no Right of Way mode, no VR mode, no Story adventure gameplay, etc. But, as we were developing, we added all those things to make the game better than originally planned.

Hellish Quart’s scope is already bigger than it was in the initial pitch, so the production time is also longer. Also, we can’t promise we won’t invent and add even more cool stuff to the game. We are not ready yet to set a final release date and commit to it fully. We really want Hellish Quart to be as good as we can make it, and this needs time.

Why don’t you just hire more people and get a publisher to speed up the development?

We want to stay indie with low operating costs to be able to take our time to invent and experiment with Hellish Quart’s game mechanics. If the studio grows, the expenses grow with it, and the whole thing quickly becomes about earning money to pay the staff, instead of making an original and innovative game. Also, when the only two full members of the team are just Kate and me, there is no risk that we go bankrupt, or some publisher closes us down.

Hellish Quart was never about making it quickly, cashing out and “being done” with it. It always was about making more realistic sword fighting mechanics, and we are lucky that the Early Access popularity allowed us to have more time to explore this subject.

Why are there ducats in the game? How do they work?

This is all optional and you can turn it off in Options. All unlocks will be then available from the start and all progression systems will be halted.

Ducats are in-game points that you earn for winning fights and lose for losing fights. You can then spend your Ducats on unlocking character skins, arena upgrades, etc. You can earn Ducats only by playing the game, you can’t buy them with real money.

How does the Ducats system work:

• When you play, you win a random amount of Ducats for every victory in modes: Arcade, Survival, and History Buff. The chances for winning bigger amounts increase the longer you play in one run. You also get a big amount of Ducats for defeating the Boss.
  

• If you lose a fight in modes: Arcade, Survival, and History Buff, you will lose a percentage of your overall treasure. So the more Ducats you have, the more you will lose if you get defeated. The maximum amount of ducats you can lose in a fight is capped at 100.

This design causes a few things:

• If you are a beginner in the game, and you have just a small amount of Ducats, your losses will be very cheap. But if you already fought 100+ fights, and you accumulated a large amount of Ducats, your losses will be expensive.

• If you, for whatever reason, start dying a lot, your losses will become cheaper and cheaper.

• This game aims to simulate real duels. In real life, even a single loss would have catastrophic consequences (potentially life-ending). Having some consequences for losing a duel in a video game makes the duel more realistic, and realism is what this game is all about.

• If you have much to lose in a duel, it should make you fight like you have much to lose. If you have nothing to lose, it should make you fight like you have nothing to lose. Completely different mindset and fighting style!

• Some unlocks are expensive. Unlocking them requires you to accumulate a larger amount of Ducats. This percentage-for-loss system makes accumulating more Ducats require not only playing longer, but also playing more skillfully. Basically: dying less, since every loss can set you back big time.

This is the logic behind this system. Hellish Quart is still in Early Access and all this will probably evolve in some way.

But as always, if you don't like it, you can just turn this all off, hide the Ducats system, and unlock everything with one click in Options.

Can I go back to earlier versions of the game? I don’t like the current ones.

Sure thing!

1. Open the Steam client and right click on Hellish Quart.

2. Choose Properties and go to the Beta tab.

3. In the Beta dropdown menu choose the version of the game you like best. They go way back to the initial Early Access release version from 2021.

Also, keep in mind, that every change that altered the gameplay experience can be turned off in the Main Menu\Options\Gameplay menu inside the game. If you turn it all off, Hellish Quart will feel like the early versions of the game (canceling at any time, no on-block cooldowns, no stamina drain on whiff, etc.). Those added features are there to fix big exploits that the early versions had, but you can turn them off if you liked it better that way.