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Swordsman X combines PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds with Chinese martial arts
We played the beta test of a uniquely Chinese battle royale game
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This article originally appeared on ABACUS
Imagine PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds crossed with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon -- a battle royale game where guns are replaced by swords.
That’s Swordsman X, a new title for PC from Cube Game that just finished a closed beta test. It takes the formula of games like PUBG -- 100 players scavenging for weapons, killing everyone else to become the last one standing -- and combines it with martial arts elements from Chinese martial arts stories, known as wuxia.
So instead of driving a jeep through the desert avoiding bazooka fire, you dodge flying daggers while riding through a bamboo forest atop a stallion. You can also walk on walls, bounce off trees, and slash your enemies while lunging and twirling like Jet Li.
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Battle royale games have achieved an almost otherworldly popularity in China. Other than Fortnite, almost all the other major games in the genre on mobile (Knives Out, Rules of Survival, even PUBG Mobile) come from Chinese companies. The government is arresting people who build cheat tools for the game. And a guy almost broke up with his girlfriend because she spent ten hours every day playing with her friends.
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All that just makes Swordsman X stand out even more. Most other Chinese battle royale games follow PUBG’s template pretty closely, with a modern military theme and weapons that mirror the real world.
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