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.

It’s rather unique, especially as the city of Tyndalston changes and responds to your actions. However, you shouldn’t expect it to launch completely free of bugs. Speaking to PC Gamer, Sundberg said the team is “making it the best it really can be, we can’t do more than that.” It also isn’t crunching because “We’re too old for that. So, we’re super effective during our work hours and then come back the next day. It’s like the game, almost.”

Given the high-stakes situation that its titular protagonist is in, however, there’s still plenty of pressure, though Sundberg said it’s “more up here than anything else,” referring to his own brain. “I’ve never been this nervous for a game launch, ever, in 33 years. It’s too much at stake. I put my chin out pretty far for the studio and for this game.

“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,” and honestly, in this industry where cancellations and studio closures are becoming far too common, that’s all you really can do at times.

Of course, Samson: A Tyndalston Story isn’t a triple-A release or priced anywhere near the same, instead costing $24.99. Despite this, Liquid Swords promises an experience that “truly punches above its weight” with about 10 hours of gameplay required for its main story. It’s available exclusively on PC tomorrow, but it may also launch for consoles afterwards. Check out our feature for everything you should know before buying.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with the action-adventure, it takes a unique approach to debt traps, with the titular Samson forced to pay off mobsters for a botched heist, his sister’s life functioning as collateral. That’s quite the pickle, and it only gets worse if you fail to meet the payment deadline, with the interest threatening to overwhelm you. That’s the kind of desperation that could allow a real hero (and a real human being) to rise from the ashes, or for a lesser one to crumble under its weight.

If you’re thinking about embodying the former, you’ll have to get good with the rugged melee combat and hazardous vehicular chases. Survival isn’t guaranteed, though, and you’re going to have to take each day as it comes in Tyndalston’s vicious streets.

We think that it could catch you by surprise, and while it’s only for PC players right now, Liquid Swords hasn’t fully ruled out the possibility of console versions coming later down the line. In the meantime, Samson: A Tyndalston Story launches April 8 on Steam and the Epic Games Store.

We were able to glean some interesting details from it all, starting with a look into Samson’s personality. He’s definitely an interesting protagonist, but what’s surprising is that he finds the time to help people in need despite the desperate circumstances he’s in. His sister Oonagh seems to be a driving force in his life, and we also learned that he’s in debt thanks to a heist gone wrong (perpetuated by his brother Louis), a situation for which he’s being blamed and forced to rack up some serious cash towards setting the record straight.

We also got a good look at the game’s supporting cast, who seem like the kind of ride-or-die pals any of us would want to have in our real lives. Samson’s definitely going to need their support on the unforgiving streets of Tyndalston in an experience we think we might not be fully ready for when it drops in less than a week for the PC. Check out our feature for everything you need to know.

The game’s promotional materials sell a world that’s impactful, but puts an emphasis on the grime that layers it all, and the style with which you’re able to deal with it. But that’s not what has us so excited to get our hands on this one. Instead, we think that Tyndalston’s gritty vibe is a potent backdrop for a game that constantly puts you under pressure, while forcing you to be disciplined about the way you approach tough situations, with very real consequences for bad decisions.

Wondering how we arrived at that conclusion? We’re happy to take you through that rather entertaining train of thought, so let’s dive in.

The Weight of the World

Samson’s core premise is decidedly heavy, and we think that it’s intended to be that way, as it underlines all of the chaos that life in Tyndalston has to offer our world-weary protagonist. He’s in deep debt with the wrong people, and the price of failure is his sister’s life. He’s managed to buy himself some time to set things straight, but it’s never that simple when your back is against the wall, is it? Your “debt grows by the hour”, since every missed deadline adds a hefty interest that piles on if you let it go out of control.

Your debtors are greedy, wanting to squeeze every possible bit of value out of a man who has managed to get himself entangled deep without any exit route, or even the hope of one. You only have that many action points to spend every day you’re in Tyndalston, and you have to use them as wisely as you can if you’re intending to keep your head up. There’s no safety net or do-overs if you get things wrong, and you’re just going to have to learn to live with the consequences of your actions.

It might look like a crime fantasy from a distance, something akin to a GTA-lite sandbox, thanks to how its visuals present Tyndalston. The clock’s like a ticking time bomb, working against you in an experience that doesn’t encourage casual improvisation in the face of complex problems. Instead, it seems designed to have you feeling cornered and under constant pressure to learn how to make the most out of systems that put you on the back foot.

In Tyndalston, Samson isn’t the hunter, but is rather the prey, and his survival is in your hands. Those are some high stakes, and it’s a good thing that the game’s combat looks like he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve. But will they be enough?

Fighting For Your Life

The game’s official position on its combat system is that it emphasizes using the world around you and improvised tools to sustain the momentum you manage to gain in a fight. With over twenty-five skills that can make Samson quite potent with his fists, with brawling being an important part of the experience, working alongside driving mechanics that come with the same design underpinnings, it can be easy to think that you’re going to be solving a lot of Samson’s problems with some stylized violence.

Once again, we think that the game’s most important message is being buried under expectations that might not truly align with the kind of gameplay loop it’s trying to sell. We couldn’t help but think of Sifu when forming our impressions of Samson’s combat. They may be entirely different games on the surface, but we think that every fight in that excellent martial arts experience was a desperate struggle to stay one step ahead of your foes through calm, calculated movements and positioning combined with some dexterous moves.

Samson’s combat could come with a similar vibe, requiring that you use his skills with precision instead of raw aggression. He’s one man against the world, and it seems designed to bury him under its weight, irrespective of how strong you can make him. We believe it’s not about the stylish chaos you might expect from a crime sandbox, but a more disciplined approach that requires restraint and aggression in equal measures.

Of course, Samson isn’t going to rely solely on his martial prowess, and there’s another important layer to his time in Tyndalston that deserves his due. We’re talking, of course, about his car.

Creating Distance From Your Problems

What does one do when their problems seem to be suffocating them, with seemingly no escape? Well, they try to run, of course. Samson isn’t above trying to put some distance between himself and his enemies to get some breathing room, and, as such, is going to depend on cars quite a bit as he tries to deal with his debts. The game’s been quick to refer to vehicles as blunt weapons, and that they’re going to be quite important to you as you engage with Tyndalston’s underbelly in your desperate efforts to get ahead.

Of course, every world-weary hero needs a ride they can count on, and for Samson, that’s Pacific Drive. It’s been presented as your only companion, a constant in a world that’s primed to pull out the rug from under your feet time and time again. You’re going to need it, as trying to run is only going to have people trying to catch you with chases, collisions, traps, and close-quarters encounters being touted as a part and parcel of life back home for Samson.

All of that looks like your car is going to be an integral part of your time in the game, woven into the gameplay organically enough to make it a foundational inclusion, not a decorative one. Pacific Drive isn’t a fancy toy for you to play with, but a potent tool that you must use to its fullest if you want to increase the chances of your survival in this game’s gritty world, which brings us to how the game seems structured.

A Focused and Frenetic Experience

We think that Samson isn’t going to be a stream of content that many would call bloat, an attempt to pad out a world that otherwise feels empty. The reason for that is the developers telling us that the main story is roughly ten hours long while that’s a rather short run time that doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t be a good one.

Well, Samson might disagree considering why he’s in it, but we think that the game is more about quality over quantity, and that Tyndalston is going to pack more meaningful content that fits within the larger narrative to make a cohesive, focused adventure that sustains a fast pace while maintaining the tension that the game places on your shoulders. It’s a game that doesn’t seem interested in mass appeal, instead focusing on delivering a memorable experience for those players who choose to engage with it.

And while we’re on the subject of the game’s world, it’s time to turn our attention to Tyndalston as a stage upon which Samson’s fate unfolds.

A World That Keeps You In Check

With the game’s official position being that the chaos you create dictates the pressure you’re going to face, it only makes sense to weave the city itself into that loop. Samson isn’t just running from outlaws, but from a reactive sandbox that’s just waiting to respond to his actions in the game.

The city fights back if you try to push it too hard, and demands that you carefully navigate its intricacies via your interactions with the various factions and people you’re going to meet as you try to help Samson find a way out of his quandary. Tyndalston isn’t a city that’s waiting for your strong hands to take over it, but is instead one that remembers what you do, and responds to those actions in ways that matter via tangible shifts to its streets and who you meet in them.

That’s a facet of the experience we can’t wait to see more of, if we’re being honest, as we think Tyndalston isn’t going to be like GTA, where you go all out to create chaos. It’s less of a playground and more of a pressure chamber that you’re meant to navigate with care and tact, evolving your strategy in the face of a constantly shifting world.

Balancing Excitement and Expectations

Samson’s wishlists are definitely a cause for celebration, and all of those players waiting to dive in are not wrong to be excited for it. Heck, we’re more than ready to dive in and see how its systems come together after all. But we can’t help but wonder how much of the hype is built around the aspects of it that are more in your face. It’s so easy to think of this one as a crime fantasy where you unleash your fists and drive around causing mayhem as you evade your enemies or bring a grisly end to their bad intentions towards you.

But it’s more than that. We’re excited because we see a game that’s built on tension, requiring a restrained approach while you navigate choices, while trying to offset trade-offs that come from your decisions. The game’s wishlists are only an indication of how many eyes are on it, and the hype surrounding it is certainly justified. But for a game as ambitious as this one, the expectations that its players carry might be a factor that influences its early reception.

We believe that Samson is going to be a pleasant surprise, not because its size and scope surpass what is expected of it, but rather because it won’t be a game that’s afraid to hit back at every turn, and demand more of its players than they are ready to give it. And that’s the part we’re most excited for, as we love beating a game that does its utmost to punish us.

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.