But at its core lies something heartfelt: a gritty, tightly-focused undertaking where facing harsh, inescapable reality is the only route to survival.

Studio Liquid Swords acknowledged the game’s shortcomings on day one, admitting that performance issues were unacceptable before vowing to improve quality, gameplay, and content. While Samson McCray may be trapped in a downward spiral, the developers behind him are facing a different test – whether they can channel that pressure into meaningful change.

And they got off to a flying start, showing they’ve got the steel to earn their second chance. The first day after launch saw a sizeable update, focused on mending a suite of immersion-breaking problems. Performance and crashes were the most immediate concerns, accompanied by fixes for glitching animation, inconsistent AI behaviour, and malfunctioning saves.

Yet, even in moments when the game held together technically, mechanical friction persisted in that first update’s wake. Combat, while functional, was hampered by awkward camera work and limited readability, making encounters clumsy and disruptive rather than a defining feature. Missions followed familiar tropes, with an air of repetition dulling the game’s loop.

"Even in moments when the game held together technically, mechanical friction persisted in that first update’s wake."

Individually, these issues were manageable. As a collective, they made it impossible to see Samson for what it was trying to be. Underneath all those rough edges was a diamond; a game with a focused identity that was simply overshadowed by its shortcomings.

On a macro level, Samson: A Tyndalston Story is defined by pressure, the sum of its systems revolving around debt, daily quotas, and the constant threat from egregious power. It’s less about exploratory freedom and more about doing what you need to do to survive, setting it apart from more conventional open world design.

This tension isn’t for everyone. Indeed, the studio acknowledged as such in our recent interview; while some players embrace the urgency and momentum, others find it restrictive or even stressful. That divide, however, is precisely what needs preserving. See, in an increasingly risk-averse industry, Samson’s commitment to a finely-tuned, demanding structure is refreshing.

There are foundational elements which stand out; the city of Tyndalston itself, for example. It’s a dense, hostile, characterful setting, replete in atmosphere and detail. And those familiar, if underbaked systems – combat, missions, vehicular traversal – all serve a functional role within the larger environment. It is this existence of a solid blueprint that made Samson’s launch so frustrating. The ideas are there, and the game ostensibly works, but it didn’t feel good to play.

So, this begs the question why the game was released when it did. Surely a few more weeks in development wouldn’t have forced the studio to undergo a campaign of redemption. Well, the answer is found in external financial pressure. See, regardless of scope – narrow when compared to big-budget triple-A experiences, but wide-ranging for Liquid Swords’ tight-knit team – tradeoffs had to be made. Some systems received more attention than others, while diagnosed issues were unresolved before launch. Ultimately, the game needed to ship, but the irony of the studio’s situation is hard to ignore. Samson, in-game, forces you to act with urgency, and in a way that’s exactly how the game itself arrived.

But, to the studio’s credit, they have taken ownership of the game’s shortcomings, levied its criticism, and are forging ahead with an aggressive, sustained rebuild. Following Samson’s first post-launch update, five more followed to address the game’s myriad issues.

"Surely a few more weeks in development wouldn’t have forced the studio to undergo a campaign of redemption. "

Coming in phases, crashes and overall performance were the team’s biggest concern, swiftly followed by functionality fixes. Vital AI reworks, from how the city’s police force escalate their response, to how smoothly enemies move through combat zones have seen notable revision. That cumbersome camera work – a considerable bugbear amongst the game’s community – has been overhauled, with perspectives now shifting dynamically during encounters to ensure a clearer read on incoming threats.

Vehicular traversal is another element to be significantly reworked, the mechanic itself encapsulating Liquid Swords’ course-correcting workflow. First came physics, performance, and animation fixes, then expansions to vehicle functionality. Improved controls, adjusted impact damage, plus tweaks to city-wide traffic and navigation. Now, the focus shifts to cosmetic, with vehicle customisation options included in the game’s most recent content update.

As the update roadmap progresses, so too does the impact of the changes. A substantial content update arrived mid-May, delivering three new difficulty modes, new jobs, and, crucially, the most immersive addition yet: debt collectors who can turn up unexpectedly across more locations throughout the city, expanding the game’s central tension across the whole experience.

Then most recently it received The Pit update, adding the Lowline Circuit Race Track, vehicle customization, and a new area in the map. The new taxi gigs and jobs should give the world extra life beyond racing.

What Liquid Swords is delivering isn’t just a game that performs more stably, but they’re shrinking the gap between vision and reality. Samson: A Tyndalston Story is becoming the game it was always intended to be. Still a diamond in the rough, but as the studio puts it to us in our recent interview: “there’s value in games that are a bit rougher.”

And that roughness, they go on to define, imbues the game’s personality and focus. You could interpret this as a statement on triple-A game production at large – games which cater to all tastes invariably end up forgettable. The challenge for Samson was to make sure that its jagged edges – its personality and focus; its distinctness – didn’t undermine the core experience.

"What Liquid Swords is delivering isn’t just a game that performs more stably, but they’re shrinking the gap between vision and reality."

Unfortunately, however, that’s exactly what happened. In our candid post-launch interview, the studio acknowledged that they underestimated the impact of the game’s technical shortcomings. But, just as importantly, they admitted to a failure in communication. Samson’s players weren’t prepared for what the game actually was, in design and playable condition alike.

Going back to the dichotomous viewpoint among Samson’s players – some embracing urgency, others pushing back against it – the game isn’t designed to be comfortable. But, in lieu of clear pre-release messaging, that tension risked feeling like needless friction rather than intentional design. Alongside their decision to deprioritise technical issues in favour of getting the game shipped, the studio recognises that these problems should have been addressed earlier.

Still, regardless of Liquid Swords taking ownership of their shortcomings, the game remains divisive. Some players are rallying behind it, supporting a smaller studio by praising their ambition to fully realise their vision, while others are less forgiving, arguing that no amount of post-launch fixes – small team or not – excuses the game launching in such a compromised state. In many ways, the surrounding conversation mirrors the game itself, where tension proves difficult to fully agree on.

So, back to the original question: is Samson: A Tyndalston Story fixed? Well, technically, yes, in large parts. It’s stable, far more playable, and freshly shined with newfound polish. But, if we’re talking fundamentally, then the game is getting close. There’s still room to evolve, where limitations in mission variety still persist, for instance.

The bottom line: Samson is now a good, distinctive, still slightly rough game, but it’s no longer broken. And, most importantly, it’s worth supporting if you buy into its core idea – that of pressure being an all-encompassing motivator, no matter the cost. And, for the first time, it feels like a game no longer crushed by external pressure either, but beginning to be shaped by it.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

Now that Samson is out, what has been the biggest lesson for Liquid Swords from the game’s launch?

When you are a team of experienced developers, sometimes, we think we have all our ducks in a row. This was the first time we launched a game on our own; a new IP from a new team /studio. It’s been a massively learning (the hard way) experience.

The biggest lesson is that players are a lot less forgiving when your fundamentals are inconsistent, even if the ideas behind the game connect. We built a game with a clear identity and a lot of systems people genuinely responded to, especially the driving, the pressure(debt) systems, the atmosphere, and the way Tyndalston feels when the game clicks. But we underestimated how much technical friction, combat readability, repetition and rough edges would drag down the overall experience.

Personally, I think our biggest lesson learned was failing to communicate clearly what kind of game Samson actually was at launch, both in terms of scope and most importantly condition. That blew up in our faces. People walked in with expectations we did not properly manage, especially around the level of polish, scale and technical state. That’s something we have to live with and are currently working on correcting.

You don’t get partial credit from players because you’re ambitious on a smaller budget. If the combat camera fights the player, if AI gets stuck, if performance stutters, if chases become repetitive, then the experience breaks down no matter how much personality the game has underneath. That execution and communication matters equally has been the two biggest lessons learned.

Samson launched to a mixed response from both players and critics. How has that reception affected your immediate priorities for the game?

It changed the order of priorities immediately. Before launch, a lot of the focus was naturally on getting the full experience shipped. After launch, it became very clear that stability, responsiveness, combat readability, AI behavior and mission variety needed to move to the top of the list.

The first patches focused heavily on performance and crashes because they had to. We pushed fixes almost immediately after launch. Since then, the work has shifted more toward gameplay feel, polish and long-term replayability.

The community feedback has actually been fairly consistent. Most players are pointing at the same things. That makes prioritization easier and we can avoid guessing or just going after the game-internal “passion projects”.

Were there any points of feedback from players that genuinely surprised you after launch?

Yes, a number of them. A personal favourite was how positively people reacted to some of the smaller systems. Jake Baldino calling out things like turning off the engine and lights to hide in your car, or using the nitro system, was important internally because it confirmed that players were noticing details we cared deeply about.

"A personal favourite was how positively people reacted to some of the smaller systems."

Another surprise was how divided players were on the debt and pressure systems. Some players absolutely love the anxiety and momentum it creates. Others find it stressful or restrictive. We expected that system to be polarizing, but probably not to that degree. Here’s also a lesson learned as we communicated heavily around the game loop / debt and how it tied into the narrative of the game. There are a lot of improvements to be done in this area.

The strongest surprise overall was how many players saw potential through the roughness. Even some of the harshest reviews described the game as a rough diamond. That tells us there’s a foundation worth continuing to build on. With every update we release, we get a lot of constructive feedback that actually is based around an understanding of the state of Liquid Swords as a business and the state of the games business in general.

Liquid Swords has already acknowledged that Samson launched with issues. Looking back, what do you think were the biggest factors that led to the game releasing in that state?

The biggest factors were scope versus resources (including financial resources). We’re not a 1000-person studio. We’re a relatively small veteran team trying to build a dense urban action game with driving, systemic combat, AI, police escalation, streaming open world systems and heavy atmosphere on a much tighter budget than people probably assume.

At some point you start making tradeoffs, because you have to. Some systems got more attention than others. Some issues were known but not solved to the level they should have been before launch. We probably also held onto certain ambitions for too long instead of simplifying earlier.

There’s also the reality that games like this become exponentially harder toward the end. Small technical issues start stacking together. AI navigation, collision, combat readability, streaming performance, camera work, vehicle interactions, all of it overlaps.

I’m not making excuses here, so the honest answer is that players paid for the game. They expect it to work properly or at least be informed of the state of the game they are buying.

The roadmap has focused heavily on stability, polish, performance, and community feedback. Which areas of the game are currently the highest priority for the team?

Combat feel, more variation are the biggest priorities right now. That includes camera work, enemy behavior, readability in larger fights, feedback, responsiveness and encounter pacing. The recent combat camera changes are only the first step there and we updated the game as of today (Wednesday the 20th), with a lot of focus on combat/camera.

NPC behavior is another major focus. Enemies getting stuck, navigation issues, inconsistent reactions, those things damage immersion very quickly in a game like this.

Mission variety is also high on the list. Not necessarily entirely new mission categories, but expanding what existing jobs can become. More scenarios, more unpredictability (or even predictability to avoid chaos), more tension and more layered objectives. Right now, we work with what we have in the game and avoid throwing in new stuff, before the game is fixed.

Then there’s continued optimization and polish across the board because the game still needs it.

Beyond fixes, are there any parts of Samson’s core gameplay loop that you are reconsidering or meaningfully improving based on player feedback?

Yes, absolutely! We are looking closely at pacing and repetition across the larger loop. Some players love the pressure structure, while others feel certain loops become too predictable over time.

"Mission variety is also high on the list. Not necessarily entirely new mission categories, but expanding what existing jobs can become. "

The debt system itself is something we still believe strongly in, but the surrounding gameplay needs more variation and more emergent situations to keep that pressure exciting rather than repetitive.

We’re also looking at how pursuits evolve, how combat escalates, how city systems react to the player, and how jobs chain into unexpected situations. The core identity of the game is not changing. But the depth and variety around it absolutely can and will improve.

Samson’s structure, the daily quota, action points, debt pressure, and escalating consequences, is one of its most distinctive ideas. How have players responded to that system?

It’s been very split, which was expected and completely natural. Some players completely understand what we were trying to do. They like the tension and they like feeling trapped in a system that constantly pressures them forward. It creates urgency and gives the game its personality. Other players feel restricted by it. They want more freedom and less pressure. The world we currently have is quite small, so we will gradually expand player autonomy as we expand the world.

What’s interesting is that even players who dislike the mechanic often still admit it makes the game feel different from other open world games. That’s important to us and we never wanted Samson to feel passive or comfortable.

The challenge now is making the system feel less repetitive while keeping the pressure intact.

Combat has been one of the major areas discussed by players. What specific improvements are you looking at for brawling, enemy behaviour, feedback, and encounter variety?

The biggest issue with combat at launch was readability and was frustrating to us as well. When fighting multiple enemies, the camera often became too tight. You simply felt too swarmed. Situational awareness broke down. Enemy attacks became harder to track and sometimes was unfair to the player.

Enemy behavior is also being expanded. Bulkier enemies now have more attack variety. Navigation and positioning have improved. We’re continuing to work on crowd behavior, spacing and reactions. We want players to feel that they can walk into a room and simply go “F-K you!” and start beating the crap out of a group of enemies with self-confidence, not relying on luck. Improvisation – look at your surroundings and use environmental hazards (my current favorite is the not-so-often used A/C falling down on enemies). Adapt – you can strategize and some enemies might have moved back in the group and can easily be taken down with a bottle thrown to the head. There are so many ways we can make the combat more varied and fun and on vision and we keep our fingers crossed we’ll be able to go all the way.

Feedback is another important area as hits need to feel clearer and heavier. Environmental interactions need to trigger more reliably. Combat rhythm needs to feel more intentional instead of chaotic. That pretty much sums up what I said earlier.

Encounter variety is equally important. Better combat systems matter, but if encounters feel too similar, players still burn out. That’s where expanded job scenarios and layered situations become important. For clarity, layered situations means that we combine different types of jobs into one and try to get the heart rates racing.

"Better combat systems matter, but if encounters feel too similar, players still burn out."

Tyndalston is clearly central to Samson’s identity. How satisfied are you with how the city came through at launch, and are there plans to make it feel more reactive or alive through updates?

The atmosphere and identity of Tyndalston are the parts of the game I’m most proud of. We have spent so much time building this world and there’s still so much we want to get into the game or in a sequel.

A lot of players connected with the city exactly the way we hoped they would. It feels hostile, decaying, oppressive and strange. Tyndalston has personality and that was one of the goals from the very get-go – City as a Character.

But there’s still room to make it feel more reactive and systemic. We want more situations that emerge naturally. More reasons for the player to pay attention to the city beyond navigation. More pressure. More unpredictability. More environmental storytelling. Traffic improvements, navigation updates and future world systems all feed into that.

Are you looking at adding more missions, activities, enemy types, vehicles, or districts, or is the focus still primarily on polishing what is already there?

Polish still comes first because it where we failed to deliver in the first place. We are actively discussing additional missions, expanded job scenarios, enemy variety, gameplay modifiers and new systems that build on what already exists.

The important thing is avoiding feature creep. We don’t want to randomly bolt on systems that dilute the game. The additions need to reinforce the identity of Samson and not introduce new features before we’ve fixed the existing ones. Right now, mission variety is probably the most important content area.

When will you consider Samson to be truly “done”? Is there a specific quality bar, content target, or player reception milestone you’re aiming for?

That’s a tough one and a very valid question. I think the best answer is when the conversation around the game shifts from technical frustration to the actual experience itself.

The game has rough edges and we know some reviews focused heavily on issues that deserved criticism. What is very inspirational to us is that there’s also a version of Samson underneath that people clearly connect with and that’s worth building on.

There’s no exact review score or sales milestone attached to that internally. It’s more about reaching a point where the game fully delivers on the experience we intended. Not from the very beginning as that is a completely different beast but sharpen the experience we have set out to build.

Do you think Samson’s smaller, rougher, more focused approach is something the industry needs more of, or has the launch shown how difficult that path can be?

I think it is the way forward, for independent developers such as us. Not saying that big-budget AAA is dead, because they are not. However, there is no publisher in the world right now that spends any money on a new IP with an external team. And I say that for certainty based on my own experience. Sure, there are older IP’s that some try to reawake, but those doesn’t come with a big budget either. There are obviously exceptions, like IO’s awesome looking 007 First Light.

With that said, smaller and more focused games is the way forward and the industry need more games that takes risks, have identity and don’t cost $300 or more to make. The middle ground has kind of disappeared.

The industry for sure needs more games that take risks, have identity, and don’t cost 300 million dollars to make. The middle ground has kind of disappeared. The launch of Samson also shows how difficult that path is technically and commercially. Players still compare your game against the biggest productions, especially when you work in a genre which is associated with sky-rocketing development costs. That puts a lot of pressure on smaller developers developing in that genre.

At the same time, there’s value in games that are a bit rougher but more personal and focused. The challenge is making sure the roughness doesn’t undermine the experience itself, as many players unfortunately experienced with the launch of Samson.

"There’s value in games that are a bit rougher but more personal and focused."

With the console versions planned for later this year, how much of the PC feedback is being folded into the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions?

Everything we’ve fixed and updated in the PC version will be folded into the console versions. That means that the console versions will benefit directly from everything we’ve learned post-launch on PC. Stability fixes, AI improvements, camera work, navigation improvements, combat updates, all of it feeds directly into the console builds.

In some ways, the PC launch became a very aggressive learning process for the whole game. The console versions should feel more mature because of that.

What kind of performance and visual targets are you aiming for on PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S?

Our Tech Director Fredrik Lönn has responded to this question.

For PlayStation and Xbox Series X, we plan to have a performance and quality mode to choose from.

PS5 & XSX

• Quality: Dynamic resolution 1080-1660p with upscaling 4k
• Performance: 1080p with upscaling 4k

XSS

• 720p – 1200p with upscaling 1440p

Are you planning any PS5 Pro-specific enhancements, whether that’s higher resolution, improved frame rates, better visual settings, or ray tracing features?

Our Tech Director Fredrik Lönn has responded to this question.

PS5 Pro will feature higher-quality graphics.

Given the game’s current technical demands, is a Nintendo Switch 2 version something you would consider later, or is that not part of the plan for now?

Nintendo Switch 2 is currently not in the plans; our current focus is to make as great an Xbox and PlayStation version as possible.

After everything the team has gone through with development and launch, what gives you confidence about Liquid Swords’ future?

The Team! Despite the criticism, despite the rough launch, the team shipped a very difficult game with a very clear identity under tough conditions. Just releasing a game today, especially self-published, is a daunting task.

They also stayed with the company and as soon as the game was out, they tackled as many issued as they possibly could enabling us to respond quickly. They really owned the criticism rather than pretending it didn’t exist. As a founder and studio head, that loyalty, dedication and iron will, means a lot to me.

Many games, big and small, launch rough for various reasons. What matters is that the developer (us – Liquid Swords) understand why and learn from it, and keep on fixing the issues, improving the game with honesty instead of making excuses. We are doing just that!

We keep all the social channels open for discussion and have got some great feedback from the players and we continue to update the game. The next update is planned for June 9th and will be a BIG one.

Sundberg revealed this to Chris Dring of The Game Business and provided an update on the PC version’s launch. Which, if you’ve been following it, hasn’t exactly been the best – something that he warned players about beforehand.

“The launch has gone a bit so-so,” he said. “The game suffered from way too many bugs and a lack of polish. We’re correcting it almost daily now. The reception is starting to become more positive. For us, it was just a must to get the game out. But any game released in this day and age is a success.”

While the current cadence of weekly patches will help Samson become “what most expected it to be,” Sundberg doesn’t think it will have “many new features,” instead focusing on polish. Interestingly, the studio wanted to launch simultaneously on all platforms out of the gate, but financial reasons prevented that.

“We didn’t have the bandwidth. But now the game is out, we do. And the game is already running on consoles. It just needs to be optimized, and then we have to go through the submission.” Unfortunately, you shouldn’t expect a Nintendo Switch 2 version anytime in the future.

“It’s so graphics-heavy that it wouldn’t run very well on Switch 2 without some serious compromises on the graphics side,” replied Sundberg.

For more details on Samson, you can check out our review, where we gave it a seven out of ten. As for the immediate future, Liquid Swords recently released an update with new car variants, Time Trial refinements, and damage adjustments. The next patch is due on April 29th and will focus on improving stability and gameplay.

It’s the mid-May patch that should catch players’ eyes since it will add new content centered around combat. In the same vein, a content drop in mid-June will be vehicle-focused. Perhaps there will be new Jobs or mechanics. Either way, stay tuned for more details as they’re revealed.

In the meantime, a new patch goes live on April 22nd, featuring new car variants and improvements to combat. It also features tuning updates for driving on keyboard (alongside a walk button), refinements to Time Trials, adjustments to damage across the board, and more.

Another update on April 29th will address community feedback while further improving stability, polish, and gameplay. The next two patches, one confirmed for May 6th, have yet to be detailed. However, the first content drop is touted as a “combat-focused content update.” In the same vein, the second is focused on vehicles, with more details for both coming soon.

As always, we’ll need to wait for more information, but even if Samson isn’t in the best state, at least Liquid Swords is keeping busy, especially given the difficulties it faced leading up to launch. For more details on the game, check out our review. You can also learn more about its various flaws and problems here.

It’s a jarring clash between what was promised and the ground reality of a game whose development had a major shakeup, a potential contributing factor in a launch response that’s quite disappointing indeed. But is SAMSON in with a chance at earning back some goodwill, Crimson Desert style? Or is it going to be one of those games that should have incited curiosity but is instead going to be relegated to the bench amid a very strong lineup of titles in 2026?

Join us as we take a look at what’s wrong with this one and how it has ended up where it is.

A Solid Title Despite Its Flaws

Yes, SAMSON is flawed. But before we dive into what hasn’t clicked in its favor, it’s a good idea to look at what a good game it is when it manages to get its act together. Tyndalston’s definitely a part of its allure, its world-building and activity being a highlight of the experience. It gives the game a distinct visual identity and aesthetic and serves as the perfect stage for its gritty crime-action set pieces.

Get into a brawl, and you’re immediately shown why this one pulls its weight, with the entire thing being quite satisfying indeed. The story isn’t too bad either, and the way it makes good use of the daily debt system lends a sense of urgency to the experience. Your debts feel almost tangible, a troublesome monster breathing down your neck that refuses to back down or reduce its influence on your life despite your best efforts. As far as its premise and presentation are concerned, this one delivers.

We can’t say we weren’t entertained by it all, but the game’s issues were a presence as constant as your debts. Its mission designs were nothing new, and that immediately made it feel a tad too derivative and safe for a title that was looking to bring an innovative layer to the crime genre. Its NPCs felt like they were there only to send us on side missions, and made Tyndalston immediately feel a little less authentic despite its visual sheen.

The camera could become your most dangerous opponent in a fight, all too often, leading to frustration that should have arisen from the gameplay being challenging, but not the game itself. That was also prevalent when we were navigating Tyndalston’s streets and back alleys, with Samson often getting caught on objects in the environment, leading to awkward acrobatics to get him out, along with some clunky movement animations that immediately pulled us out of the experience.

There was a distinct lack of polish that killed SAMSON’s momentum, and made it a title that did not ever rise beyond being a serviceable action game with a unique twist. Things haven’t gone wrong for this one because its foundation was bad. It’s just that the execution needed to be a lot better than it has turned out. Allow us to explain.

A Sudden Shake-Up

The combination of a good premise and poor execution gets quite interesting when you remember that SAMSON was suddenly scaled down quite late into its development. We know that Liquid Sword laid off a significant portion of its team back in 2025, a time when the game should have been at a later stage in its development. But the reduction in manpower working on it led to it being taken down to an AA experience instead of its original AAA label.

That’s a good explanation of why SAMSON seems so chock full of strong ideas that the game isn’t able to nail down satisfactorily enough to be a tight, cohesive experience that has you gripped from start to finish. There were reports of major features being scrapped in order to accommodate the grim reality of the real world. It looks like Tyndalston wasn’t the only place where reality hit like a truck, and the debt system was actually a product of that adversity.

But its presence in the game meant that other systems had to be left behind, the plan being to include them in future titles that hinged on SAMSON’s success. It’s easy to see how SAMSON was a game that was meant to be much larger than it actually is. It was perhaps meant to be larger than life itself, presenting an experience that blended fast-paced action with narrative urgency in a way that would not let its players leave Tyndalston unless they were dragged away.

And yet, those very players are now likely all too happy to wait on the promised patch to the game before they can even be bothered to return, and that’s a real shame. There’s still a lot to like under the hood of this one, with its emphasis on physical combat instead of gunplay fitting very well with its narrative explorations of just how far a person can go when they are pushed to and beyond their limits, both mentally and morally.

Samson operates in a grey area, desperate to find a way out of circumstances that are spiraling out of his control. Liquid Swords finds itself in the same predicament, and while the potential for a turnaround is certainly there, it remains to be seen how the studio manages to get back in the good graces of its players. SAMSON’s vision might have survived the brutal reality of the real world but the reduction in its team’s manpower meant that the polish that its vision needed was clearly a casualty of the studio’s response to its own problems.

But turning things around is going to be an uphill task with discourse around the game’s launch being as focused as it is on problems rather than its potential.

Tough Conversations

Christofer Sundberg’s, Founder & CCO of Liquid Swords, statement acknowledging SAMSON’s issues, is probably a good start to getting in a bit of damage control. So is his assertion that the game is “here to stay”, which preceded the announcement of fixes for its bugs and further polishing of the experience to get it up to scratch with a very tight deadline. That shows commitment to helping the game achieve success, but we think the entire situation could have been avoided in the first place.

There’s a reason we gave SAMSON a 7/10 in our review, after all. It isn’t a bad game, far from it. We’ve seen harsher takes on it and understand where those players and critics are coming from. It isn’t going to be the masterpiece it could have been, thanks to the game’s character AI being as dull as it is, a facet we even mentioned in our review as one that might prove too costly to remedy. But there are other areas of improvement that are accessible, and they could make the game one that has enough merit to justify its lower price point.

Heck, we’d argue that its price point makes even its launch build a lot more attractive. We’d probably have been very hard on it if it had been priced higher. There’s a fairly decent game in there, but it needed far more time in the oven before it was served up to us all. But all isn’t lost if you’re wondering whether this one is doomed to fail. The response from Liquid Swords is quite encouraging and is probably a better form of damage control than the one we got for MindsEye last year.

We’d say that it’s going to be interesting to see where SAMSON goes from here, as it may have launched in a average state, but it comes with enough redeeming qualities for us to be invested in its recovery. We called it a rough diamond, and how its developers choose to polish it could be as interesting as its titular hero’s attempts to chip away at a mountain of debt that might make any lesser man think of leaving the country.

But SAMSON is here to stay, per its studio, and that confidence makes us optimistic about the chances of it becoming better than it is now. And perhaps, in the journey to that goal, it manages to win back its players along the way. This one’s a redemption arc worth looking at, and we’re hoping that a game that comes with a lot of potential manages to find a way to achieve as much of it as it can. Samson could really use some good news, and given our worry that a game with so much potential could fail to get the credit it deserves, so could we.

Time will tell if this one manages to salvage its reputation. But it’s going to be an interesting few weeks ahead either way.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

While details are a tad too scarce for our liking, the team has announced further improvements to stability, gameplay, further polishing, and responses to player feedback in the second patch. Information on the third patch will also be available as we approach its scheduled release.

If you haven’t been keeping up with this title, it’s otherwise been a rough but fairly entertaining romp through Tyndalston. The city and its various consequences managed to offer enough to keep us interested. Still, it’s one that clearly needed more time in development (even despite various circumstances). We’re hoping that Liquid Swords manages to pull off a strong recovery, given how this one can really click when all of its systems come together.

Samson is currently exclusive to PC on Steam and the Epic Games Store, but console versions have been considered. As always, stay tuned for more updates on them in the coming weeks and months.

The performance improvements largely revolve around PSO-related issues, including misses, such as one that fetches materials from the wrong LOD (level of detail) levels, even for Nanite-enabled meshes. Speaking of which, misses related to NaniteLumenCard and NaniteShading have also been addressed, along with ray tracing-related misses for dynamic geometry.

As for general gameplay, the update has brought in a failsafe for NPCs dying to fall damage, as well as fixes for issues with AI running onto busy roads to inspect dead bodies, and police sirens sometimes not working. The update has also brought in some more polish to the game, like improved lean-on-wall alignment, higher volume for NPC vehicles, and separate dialogue buckets for police vehicles and remote dialogue. For a complete list of everything in the update, check out the patch notes below.

Samson is currently only available on PC. For more details, check out our review. Also, take a look at the studio lead’s opinions on the current state of the industry.

Samson update #1 patch notes:

Performance

• Several performance fixes focusing on PSO related hitches (Fixes stuttering related issues)
• Fixed some misses with Slate
• Fixed landscape RayTracingDynamicGeometry misses
• bIgnoreMaskMateria & bRequireRTDynamicGeometryUpdate was not set correctly from landscape PSO precache dispatch since 5.7
• NaniteLumenCard & NaniteShading misses
• Fixed PSO misses due to FStaticMeshComponentHelper::CollectPSOPrecacheDataImpl fetching materials from LOD levels depending on MinLOD even for Nanite-enabled meshes which will render with LOD 0 materials

Crash fixes

• Crash fix for clearing UseDestructionHelp for vehicles with a timer
• Fix for potential case where attempting to update a failed dispatch when losing warp governance could clear the callback lambda as it was being executed, causing a dangling this pointer and crash
• Fixed various audio-related crashes, including one when closing the game
• Avoid race conditions caused by writes to bIsCachedRayTracingInstanceValid and bDynamicRayTracingInstanceCachedDataDirty from parallel tasks
• Force separate storage unit between ray tracing and non-ray tracing bits
• Force separate storage unit between bIsCachedRayTracingInstanceValid and bDynamicRayTracingInstanceCachedDataDirty

Physics

• Fixed issue with Physics destructables behaving like solid objects and not getting destroyed when playing on high framerates.

Mission

• Ice Fish – NPCs spawned in the Beatdown are no longer only Level 1
• Thrill of the Fight and Running on Fumes – now functional after save/continue
• Suzy Red no longer gets multiplied during “Stitches for Snitches” mission completion
• Hit 16 (No Return Fare) – passenger now gets into the cab at the pickup location
• Dave Shultz Tailing Job – Dave now spawns close to player, avoiding near-instant fails for being too far away
• Story Chapter – No Whisper Dealers – no beatdown triggers when eliminating enemies, preventing mission failure
• Hot Iron – fixed issue where the fail radius for the reach dealer objective was too small
• Day 3: Oonagh Welcome Home – call now comes after story mission Blood on Tap rather than Dirty Scripts
• Fixed issue with the “Hot Iron” not being replayable after failing and retrying the next day.
• Improved traversal and removed collision traps by White Whisper stash close to the priest’s house in Park Avenue.
• Fixed the Cumberland barge wall

General Gameplay

• NPC fall damage added as a failsafe for dropped NPCs
• Day 3 Pickups – raised interact range to allow easier pickup if an item is dropped under a body
• Let outsiders check if the driver can be pulled out of the vehicle
• Fixed issues where enemies were not advancing towards you in group encounters
• Fixed issues with AI running onto roads to inspect dead bodies
• Fixed issue where police siren sometimes did not work

Polish

• Fixed smoker alignment in Double Tap and Suzy’s
• Fixed vehicle voices
• Added a dedicated “remote dialogue” bucket for voice lines without a visible speaker (e.g. phone calls or police radio chatter)
• Added separate dialogue buckets for police vehicles and remote dialogue
• Fixed door kick spam
• [Audio] New day stinger now plays before dialogue
• Increased volume for NPC vehicles
• Prevented corpses from popping back up or being launched into the air after takedowns, hazards, or railing interactions
• Improved lean-on-wall alignment
• Blocked bark gestures or one-offs during ranged combat
• Fixed Vivian holding a folder in the doctor’s office instead of nothing
• [Audio] Added “outside vehicle” dialogue lines to NPC non-combat efforts
• Fixed several grammatical errors
• Removed the facility marked on the map for no reason.
• Improved French localization, adding a whole lot of strings that were missed in translation.

Combat

• Fix for unreliable combat barge. If you tried to do a combat barge during the 4-second cooldown, it would just drop you out of combat stance instead.
• Fixed issue with Enemies failing to pull the player out of a vehicle if misaligned even slightly.
• Balanced Police escalation detection ranges to make it fair to the player.
• Fixed issue with player falling through the floor, dying.

Usability

• New “Controls” screen for showing game input from the pause menu
• Correct text for Carpe Diem: First Job costs 0 AP.
• Added Heal to combat hints
• Fixed so we toggle Grab / Throw when you pick up an item in the combat hints
• Fixed issues with changing the Deadzone setting not changing the way sticks respond
• Fixed issues with turning off vibration in the settings.

Sundberg said that Samson: A Tyndalston Story was made because he was essentially tired of “swallowing all the c*** that the industry feeds us,” and went on to talk about how leaders of the business are “just flushing it all down in the toilet.” He went on to note that, by making Samson, he would “rather go down screaming, than haven’t at least tried to get us back on track.”

Sundberg has been quite outspoken about the state of the gaming industry in the past as well. Back in February, he referred to the state of the industry as being “cowardly,” and spoke about how difficult it is these days to get a game made.

“I’ve been making games for over three decades and never experienced such a desperate, cowardly (they call it ‘risk averse’) and confused state of the business,” Sundberg said. “After the acquisition / over-investing party during ‘21-’23, we are dealing with the hangover, and it’s been going on for three years.”

He also made a note about Liquid Swords being “careful” with its budget planning, and having to lay-off half of the team to ensure that the studio would be able to have a better budget to work with in 2026.

“We have very careful cash-flow planning as we are on a limited budget,” he explained. “Last year, we made the tough decision to lay off (I don’t call it ‘restructuring’ or any other BS term for what it actually is) half the team, to buy us a longer runway into 2026. We made a bet, and we do everything we can to deliver a fun $25 experience to lay the foundation for the future. I hope our future players will see the potential in our work and follow us on our journey to make something bigger.”

Leading up to the release of Samson: A Tyndalston Story, Sundberg had spoken about how players shouldn’t expect the game to be completely bug-free on release. Rather, the studio is “making it the best it really can be; we can’t do more than that.”

“I made a promise to the team that I couldn’t keep a year ago, and now I’ve made a new promise to the team that is just working their asses off to finish this game.” That new promise was that Liquid Swords would “get this game out,” he explained.

In the meantime, the studio has already confirmed that Samson: A Tyndalston Story will be getting an update on April 10th, bringing in several bug fixes and addressing performance issues. The team is also working on fixing animated-related issues for future updates.

Samson: A Tyndalston Story is available on PC. For more details, check out our review.

Thankfully, if you held off on purchasing until, say, April 10th, a major patch is slated to go live with numerous fixes. These include addressing performance issues based on PSO, crashes related to audio and animation, and progression blockers. It will even add the ability to have eight separate save files.

“We are committed to the future of both Samson and Tyndalston, and this game will grow over time on all fronts; quality, gameplay and content,” said the developer. “We will continue to keep our ears to the ground and improve the game with your support.”

Aside from this update, the team will focus on fixing gameplay and animation-related issues, addressing additional performance problems and further polishing the experience. Check out some of the patch notes below and full details here.

You can also read our review of Samson, which we gave a seven out of ten. While console versions haven’t been officially announced, Liquid Swords will “get cracking” on them after the PC release, presumably after it’s ironed out the majority of issues. Stay tuned for updates in the meantime.

#1 Samson Game Update

Performance

• Several performance fixes focusing on PSO related hitches (fixes stuttering related issues)
• Fixed some misses with Slate
• Fixed landscape RayTracingDynamicGeometry misses
• bIgnoreMaskMateria & bRequireRTDynamicGeometryUpdate was not set correctly from landscape PSO precache dispatch since 5.7
• NaniteLumenCard & NaniteShading misses
• Fixed PSO misses due to FStaticMeshComponentHelper::CollectPSOPrecacheDataImpl fetching materials from LOD levels depending on MinLOD even for Nanite-enabled meshes which will render with LOD 0 materials

Crash fixes

• Several crash fixes related to audio, animation and GPU
• Crash fix for clearing UseDestructionHelp for vehicles with a timer
• Fix for potential case where attempting to update a failed dispatch when losing warp governance could clear the callback lambda as it was being executed, causing a dangling this pointer and crash
• Fixed various audio-related crashes, including one when closing the game
• Avoid race conditions caused by writes to bIsCachedRayTracingInstanceValid and bDynamicRayTracingInstanceCachedDataDirty from parallel tasks
• Force separate storage unit between ray tracing and non-ray tracing bits
• Force separate storage unit between bIsCachedRayTracingInstanceValid and bDynamicRayTracingInstanceCachedDataDirty

Mission

• Several fixes for mission and progression related issues
• Ice Fish – NPCs spawned in the Beatdown are no longer only Level 1
• Thrill of the Fight and Running on Fumes – now functional after save/continue
• Suzy Red no longer gets multiplied during “Stitches for Snitches” mission completion
• Hit 16 (No Return Fare) – passenger now gets into the cab at the pickup location
• Dave Shultz Tailing Job – Dave now spawns close to player, avoiding near-instant fails for being too far away
• Story Chapter – No Whisper Dealers – no beatdown triggers when eliminating enemies, preventing mission failure
• Welcome Home 4 – fixed issue where the fail radius for the reach dealer objective was too small
• Day 3: Oonagh Welcome Home – call now comes after story mission Blood on Tap rather than Dirty Scripts

General Gameplay

• Several fixes for gameplay related issues
• NPC fall damage added as a failsafe for dropped NPCs
• Day 3 Pickups – raised interact range to allow easier pickup if an item is dropped under a body
• Let outsiders check if the driver can be pulled out of the vehicle
• Fixed issues where enemies were not advancing towards you in group encounters
• Fixed issues with AI running onto roads to inspect dead bodies
• Fixed issue where police siren sometimes did not work

The combat felt punchy, the graphics looked absolutely stunning, and the story seemed like something that might be right up my alley. And all of that at a price point of 25 USD? The whole combination felt almost unbelievable. Something had to give, right? Well, after playing the game, things are not always smooth for our protagonist Samson.

Let’s focus on the story first. You play as Samson McCray, a former driver who returns to his hometown of Tyndalston carrying a huge debt after a heist gone wrong. His sister Oonagh made a deal with the bad guys, and if Samson pays back the debt, their lives will be spared. Much of the plot has a serious, dark tone, as you take on jobs (more on that in a bit) to slowly pay off what you owe. Along the way, you meet quite a few characters, each with their own twists to the tale.

"There is pretty much every kind of job you could imagine here, whether it is tailing an NPC, chasing down a convoy and crashing it out, taking out bad guys, delivering items, tackling time trials, or escaping the law in a chase."

Without revealing too much, this is a grounded urban crime story very much in the vein of Sleeping Dogs, and although it never reaches those heights, Samson still has a decent tale to tell. The voice acting is decent overall, though Oonagh’s performance can be pretty corny. Samson, on the other hand, kept me curious enough to see the story chapter by chapter. So overall, the plot is decent, and while it does not do much that feels fresh, it stayed engaging enough in my experience.

The core of Samson revolves around taking on jobs, earning money for the day, progressing the story, and paying off your debt. There is pretty much every kind of job you could imagine here, whether it is tailing an NPC, chasing down a convoy and crashing it out, taking out bad guys, delivering items, tackling time trials, or escaping the law in a chase.

It is all the sort of stuff that many open games have explored in the past. As such, these missions do not bring much novelty to the table, even if they are generally serviceable. If you are interested in Samson, chances are you have already played missions like these before. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes simplicity and a sense of familiarity are all you need, and Samson generally does an okay job with its mission design. However, if you are hoping for something truly remarkable like the standout missions you find in GTA, no, that is not happening here.

Once you complete jobs, you earn cash and action points, with the latter being used to complete or retry missions. Cash, meanwhile, can also be spent on repairing your vehicle, refilling petrol and nitro, and changing tyres.

Once you are out of action points, you return to your apartment. If you hit your daily debt targets, all is well, but if you keep missing them, you receive a strike, and the next morning enemies will show up at your place to beat the socks off you. It is an interesting system because it makes missed targets feel consequential and gives players a real sense of urgency as they try to stay on track.

"Speaking of that lack of polish, the game clearly has its share of animation and bug related issues. Samson climbs over fences awkwardly, his jump feels clunky and can sometimes leave him stuck between objects, and there is clipping here and there."

Combat forms the core loop of the experience, and when it works, the game does pack a punch, no pun intended. The combat itself is simple. You can dodge, throw light attacks, land heavy punches, use objects to lay the smackdown, and even make use of the environment to take enemies out.

The enemy AI is acceptable, but nothing special, and at times foes would just stand there and do nothing. The camera can also become hard to deal with, sometimes putting me in situations where I could not efficiently track multiple enemies at once. This kind of inconsistency does hurt the flow of fights, but when everything clicks, the combat system could be brutally satisfying.

The vehicle handling is on point, but its combat sequences are no Burnout. These are simple chase encounters where you just keep ramming enemy vehicles until they go down. There is no real sense of style to them, but they get the job done.

There is also a compact progression system where you earn XP and skill points to unlock abilities such as seeing police patrols on the minimap, carrying more painkillers, or making your vehicle deal more damage to targets. Overall, the combat system is solid, but there’s a clear sense that the game needed more time in development, as the inconsistent level of polish is hard to ignore.

Speaking of that lack of polish, the game clearly has its share of animation and bug related issues. Samson climbs over fences awkwardly, his jump feels clunky and can sometimes leave him stuck between objects, and there is clipping here and there. NPCs feel stiff, both visually and from a technical standpoint. Many of them simply stand around doing nothing or engage in random animations, nonsensical activities.

Their AI is fairly basic, and most of them feel like background filler more than meaningful parts of the world. Although some of them offer Stories, which serve as the game’s side lore, most interactions with them are bland or just lead to brawling. I wish Liquid Swords had done more with them, but it is clear they were never much of a priority. It all adds up to a game that feels like it needed more time to cook.

Fortunately, Samson’s world looks amazing, and it feels like most of the game’s budget went into the streets of Tyndalston and the sheer amount of detail they pack. Made up of several districts, Tyndalston is extremely well designed, with its drab, dark, and sad aesthetic standing out in all the right ways.

Thanks to the developer’s attention to the game’s art style, the city tells a story of its own. Finding points of interest and collectibles does add a welcome sense of exploration while free roaming. The visual quality of the world is easily one of the game’s biggest strengths, and although there is no dynamic day night cycle with time changing automatically as you take on jobs, the lighting and the overall charm of the city are still impressive.

On the technical side of things, Samson is a fairly demanding game. We ran it on an RTX 3080 Ti, Ryzen 9 5950X, and 16 GB of RAM, with every setting cranked up to Ultra and DLSS set to Performance. Frame rate stability was solid. We were not necessarily aiming for 60 FPS and above given the genre, but I can confidently say that dropping a few settings likely would have pushed it to that mark.

"At times, Samson does feel built around familiar mission templates, with the developers leaning more on proven ideas than bold ones."

Perhaps Samson’s biggest selling point is its price. At 25 USD, you are getting a largely functional game, and although there are noticeable issues across several areas, the price point and what the game gets right are definitely its biggest strengths. I doubt the AI problems can be fixed through patches, since that would require considerable effort, but the technical issues I mentioned certainly could be, if Liquid Swords intends to address them.

At times, Samson does feel built around familiar mission templates, with the developers leaning more on proven ideas than bold ones. That feeling is not entirely misplaced, as Samson does not take too many risks. On the other hand, it knows what it wants to do, and it does that in an acceptable manner. Its world design, hand to hand combat, visuals, daily debt paying system with consequences, and decent story do enough to make it worth that 25 USD asking price.

This game was reviewed on PC.