Quick answer: A small tactical RPG built around a genuinely interesting idea: no experience points, no loot, no power creep, just 5 versus 5 battles where only your decisions matter. It never gathered enough reviews for a Metacritic score, Steam users rate it Mixed at about 63%, and the campaign runs roughly six and a half hours. The catch is decisive: the online multiplayer it was balanced around is empty, with a tracked all-time peak of four concurrent players. Buy it as a single-player curio at $14.99 or not at all.
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
Most tactical RPGs let you solve a hard battle by coming back stronger. Grind a few levels, buy better gear, try again. Live by the Sword removes that entirely. Characters gain no experience. There is no equipment to find. Every fight is decided by positioning, ability selection and turn order, and nothing else.
That is a real idea, and a brave one for a tiny studio's first game. The problem is what it commits you to, because a game with no power fantasy has to make the thinking carry everything.
What you actually get
| Mode | What it is | Worth your time? |
|---|---|---|
| Story | Three acts following two brothers, about 6.5 hours | Functions as a long tutorial. Reviewers finished without losing a battle |
| Adventure | Roguelite run across a world map with permadeath | The best mode. Stakes the campaign lacks, and unlocks Thief, Pirate and Mercenary |
| Tactician | Set-piece puzzle battles with unusual win conditions and turn limits | Closest the game gets to real difficulty. The draft version of this review omits it entirely |
| Skirmish and Board Builder | Custom battles, and a tool for making your own maps, added March 2023 | Fine, though there are limited pieces to build with |
| Multiplayer | Local and online, with cross-play across Steam, Switch and Xbox | Online is effectively dead. See below |
The structure underneath is clean. Seven classes at the start, Alchemist, Archer, Assassin, Brawler, Medic, Warrior and Wizard, each with an innate ability and a pool of eight more. You pick four to bring into a battle. That loadout choice is your entire character build, made fresh before every fight.
The problem nobody can fix
Reviewers were consistent that the balance here is tuned for human opponents rather than AI. Equal power levels, no progression, symmetrical options: that is competitive design, and it is exactly how you would build a small tactics game for player versus player.
So the online population matters more for this game than for almost anything else we have covered. Public Steam tracking shows it sitting at around one concurrent player, with an all-time peak of four, and estimated lifetime sales in the low thousands. Cross-play with Switch and Xbox adds to that pool, and those platforms do not publish figures, so the true number is somewhat higher than Steam alone. It is not meaningfully higher.
Read that figure carefully. Concurrent player counts come from third-party Steam trackers, not the developer, and they do not capture Switch or Xbox at all. What they do show reliably is scale, and the scale here is tiny. If you are buying this for online matchmaking, assume you will not find a game. Local two-player on one machine still works perfectly, and that is the version of multiplayer worth buying it for.
Where the single-player falls down
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
The campaign is too easy. Multiple reviewers reported clearing it without a single failed battle, which in a game built entirely on tactical pressure removes the point. With no levelling to chase and no gear to find, an easy fight gives you nothing at all.
Battles also drag. There is no fast-forward, animations play out in full on every turn, and the dominant strategy in 5 versus 5 is simply to gang up on one enemy at a time until the numbers tip. Once the outcome is obvious you still have to sit through the rest of it. Reviewers also described the AI making plainly poor choices, wandering away from a target on one health to attack somebody at full.
And the no-progression design cuts both ways. It is interesting in principle and it does force cleaner thinking. It also means that by a few hours in you have seen every class and every ability, and the game stops having anything new to show you. That is a structural trade-off rather than a bug, and whether you accept it is the whole decision. We looked at a game that got the same trade right in our Axiom Verge review.
The roadmap that stopped
Several reviewers at launch said the same thing: it felt like a game that left Early Access early, and recommended waiting six months for the promised content. That advice deserves an update.
Labrador Studios did deliver for a while. A Winter Update in January 2023 added Traits, removed the unlock gates on Adventure and Tactician, and sped up character movement. The Board Builder arrived in March 2023. Then it stopped. The publicly discussed plans included ranked online, new adventures and nine further classes, among them Bard, Paladin, Berserker and Geomancer. The last Steam update was 14 March 2023.
So if you read a review telling you to wait for the full roadmap, the answer is that what shipped by March 2023 is what exists. Judge it on that. For a two-person-scale studio with a first game that sold in the low thousands, that is an understandable place to stop, and the same economics closed a far bigger studio in our Saints Row review.
The price moved, and it matters
Original illustration created for IGGG Guides.
At launch it was $24.99, and nearly every negative review mentioned the price. The standard price is now $14.99 across Steam, the Nintendo eShop and Xbox, and it has gone as low as about $7.49 in sales.
Six and a half hours of campaign plus a roguelite mode and a set of tactical puzzles reads very differently at fifteen dollars than at twenty-five. There is also a free demo on Steam, which for a game this divisive is the obvious first move.
Buy, wait or skip
| You are | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Buying it for online play | Skip | Tracked peak of four concurrent players. You will not find a match |
| You have someone to play locally | Buy | Local two-player is where the symmetrical balance pays off, and it needs no population |
| Curious about no-progression tactics | Try the demo | Free on Steam, and it tells you within an hour whether the idea appeals |
| Here for story and characters | Skip | Six hours of light dialogue with no real narrative weight |
| A Fire Emblem or Tactics Ogre fan | Lower expectations | This is a small game with 5 versus 5 skirmishes, not an epic. Judge it as such |
| Waiting for the roadmap | Stop waiting | Updates ended in March 2023. The nine extra classes never shipped |
Verdict
A good idea in a game that needed players it never got. Stripping out experience and loot is a legitimate design choice and the loadout system is tidy, but the campaign is too easy to show it off, the battles drag, and the competitive balance it was built around assumes an opponent who is not there. At $14.99 with a free demo and someone on the sofa next to you, it is a reasonable evening. On your own, chasing online matches, it is not. Assessed against the final build as of the March 2023 update.
Frequently asked questions
Is the online multiplayer still active?
Effectively no. Steam tracking shows around one concurrent player with an all-time peak of four. Cross-play with Switch and Xbox adds some players, but not enough to rely on. Local two-player works regardless.
Why does it have no Metacritic score?
It never received the minimum four critic reviews needed for a Metascore. The individual reviews that exist range from Softpedia's 80 to Hey Poor Player's 2.5 out of 5, with estnn at 6.5 and XboxAddict at 6.
How long is it?
The three-act story mode runs about six and a half hours. Adventure mode and the Tactician challenges add more, with no fixed length since Adventure is a roguelite with permadeath.
Is there really no levelling up?
None. Characters gain no experience and there is no equipment to collect. Your only customisation is picking four of a class's eight abilities before each battle, which resets every time.
Is the developer still updating it?
No. The Winter Update landed in January 2023 and the Board Builder in March 2023, after which updates stopped. Ranked online and nine additional classes were discussed publicly but never released.
What platforms is it on?
PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. It launched on 28 October 2022 after Early Access from 23 June 2021, published by Gravity Game Arise.
Is there a demo?
Yes, a free demo on Steam. Given how sharply opinion splits on the no-progression design, trying it first is the sensible approach.
Where to go next
- Axiom Verge, a one-person game that got the small-scope trade-off right
- Kamiwaza: Way of the Thief, another game whose verdict changed entirely with its price
- Hotline Miami Collection, a tiny team that built something still earning a decade on
- Saints Row, and what happens when a studio's one game underperforms
- Why multiplayer games die when the population goes
- Why small studios stop shipping roadmaps
- Browse more Action and Adventure guides
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