Liquid Swords plans to keep patching the game heavily in the meantime, cutting down bugs and improving performance along the way.

Samson: A Tyndalston Story is the debut title from Liquid Swords, the studio founded by Christofer Sundberg, who also founded Avalanche Studios and is known as one of the creators of Just Cause. After a rough launch earlier this month, Sundberg and his team committed themselves to cleaning the game up properly. Numerous bug fixes and technical updates are already in the pipeline, and the console release remains part of the roadmap for this year. Samson was originally conceived as a smaller-scale AA project, but even within that scope it launched with a heavy pile of technical issues. The bugs and repetitive gameplay cost it points in multiple reviews, even though the structure of the story and the gameplay itself gave the whole experience a genuine sense of tension and stakes.

Fortunately, Liquid Swords has already reacted quickly, releasing multiple updates while preparing several more. The third major patch, arriving tomorrow, looks to be the biggest one yet after the first two mainly focused on crashes and a number of progression-blocking issues. The next update will bring further performance improvements, combat refinements, time-trial tuning, and yet more bug fixes. The console release, meaning the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series versions, is currently scheduled for this fall, and that still seems entirely realistic if the studio keeps moving at this pace.

The third patch landing on Wednesday is only the next step. The fourth update is due next week, and the fifth follows the week after that. The studio is also planning new content, and there is every chance that with the help of those fixes and additions, Samson will become a far stronger game in the near future than it was either at launch or in the pre-release version shown to the press.

This is exactly the kind of redemption arc worth rooting for, especially when it comes from a smaller studio. The only real question is whether Liquid Swords can carry that recovery through all the way and have the game running properly by the time it reaches current-generation consoles.

Source: WCCFTech, Steam