Fend

23 May 2026

I am working on a new game. I’ve actually been working on a new game since March of this year. I’ve actually had the idea for this new game since February of 2019. But today, I’ve decided to write about it here. I want to hold myself accountable to completing this game by August of 2026.

Fend is a game about fending off a seemingly endless wave of attackers. I took inspiration from a scene in Hara-kiri, a film by Masaki Kobayashi. In it, our hero is encircled by an army of samurai as his ceremonial suicide (thus the title) decidedly becomes an execution.

Hara-kiri, 1961 dir. Masaki Kobayashi

I wanted to capture this desperate struggle in the form of a short, simple interactive experience.

Other games have already tapped into the essence of a desperate struggle to survive against overwhelming odds. Hideo Kojima arguably invented and perfected the Stealth genre with his Metal Gear franchise, a series of games where direct confrontation is strongly discouraged and audacious acts of violence are met with overwhelming force. Later, Grand Theft Auto would punish (reward) the player’s hubris with an entire army of police and military units converging on their location. Survival-Horror franchises achieve their tension by defanging the player, making them no match for the legion of undead in their path. Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Alien: Isolation make dread a key feature by sending an invincible monster after the player, giving them no recourse but to flee. It occurs to me now that my first grim encounter with the inevitability of death in a video game was probably Skifree.

The Abomidible Snowman comes for us all.

Fend is intended to inject the action-packed samurai hack-n-slash genre with a dose of dread and impending doom. It is a game that captures the adrenaline rush of a warrior’s last stand.

My first 2D prototype of Fend is nearly complete. It is my first Godot project as a solo developer. I will post here as I learn new things and develop Fend in new directions.