Merlin makes a Zelda reference about an hour in to Sworn. This simple hub with two characters and dialog needed almost 50 percent of my 5070 to render at 4K/144 FPS. The game has no graphics options beyond a resolution selection. PC screenshot captured by the author.

Sworn Is the Most Blatant Clone Game I’ve Played in Decades

And its release date gambit will probably backfire

The odds are good that if you like action games or roguelikes, you’re probably a big fan of 2018’s Hades. So too is the rest of the game industry, apparently. Much like Doom and Dark Souls before it, Hades is now an entire genre template. More and more games, particularly those from indie and small studios, are trying to capture that same magical combination of fun-yet-challenging isometric action and intense narrative design, and sometimes they even mimic the art style. These clone games often also borrow the lower price point and early access release strategy.

This is how game genres grow and evolve over the years, of course; one team comes up with a hit and everyone rushes to iterate on those ideas. That’s fine, in theory, and sometimes it leads to amazing games. My favorite wild riff on this “borrow from Hades” concept so far is probably TMNT: Splintered Fate, which puts the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into a roguelike scenario for no reason other than cashing in. It shouldn’t have worked at all, but it’s a surprisingly good time.

Not all imitation is actually flattery. Sometimes games take the copying too far, pushing over the line from filling out a new genre into something a little more gross-feeling…