French Connection: Sacre Bleu
Blunderbuss your way through this action-packed sidescroller.
‣ Sacre Bleu
From: Hildring Studio Inc, Noodlecake
Platforms: PC
Release: 2025
Steam Page • Demo Video • Developer Site
Maybe they should have called this game Sacre Tromblon.
Oh no, France has fallen! Evil mercenaries conspire with ruthless aristocrats who have turned into bile-spewing zombie monsters! The loyal Musketeers are captured and thrown into jail, their captain put in the notorious Bastille to rot away! Who will save the country of fine wines, food, and fashion?!
The captain, of course! Grab your sword, pistol, and blunderbuss, and tear into France's enemies in the epic action-platform game, Sacre Bleu.
Sacre Bleu is an audacious title with outrageous characters and extravagant accents. Suitably, our hero has a larger-than-life energy matched by his stylish hat, serious moustache, and giant gun. His ally is a deranged genius plotting her escape with the captain's help. His playground is a compound of levels where he traverses jails, sewers, kitchens, and more to gather parts for an airship, smacking down his foes and navigating deadly architecture along the way.
Our hero dives heavily into combat, often facing overwhelming groups of enemies. He dispatches opponents with his sword's quick and heavy attacks, fires pistols to shoot distant targets and destroy enemy armour, and lobs grenades that take out groups of bad guys.
But Sacre Bleu's gameplay centres around the captain's blunderbuss. Though this hand cannon doesn't do much to enemies, it has special abilities that carry both the combat and platforming sections. It can deflect enemy projectiles with a smooth, slow-motion targeting system, sending them back towards enemy units to cause much damage and mayhem.
Le capitaine also uses the blunderbuss to boost himself towards unreachable heights or across long distances. Players can use the kickback and slow-motion aiming to change directions around corners. Crossing hazardous terrain in well-timed jumps is a familiar concept among precision platform games.
Like the best of them, Sacre Bleu incorporates this idea with unique execution and flair. It's ridiculously fun to clear corridors of lethal spikes with well-timed directional blasts (and frustrating when you mess it up—fortunately, you always respawn close to where you need to be). There are also other examples of this deflection mechanic, such as pushing a boat through the sewers or directing cannonballs in room-size 'breakout' events.
Maybe they should have called this game Sacre Tromblon (aka. Holy Blunderbuss—thanks, Google Translate).
Saying that a game needs to stand out in the crowded and competitive side-scroller genre has become a cliché. Yet, developers keep doing it; Sacre Bleu is the latest example of how the genre's popularity pushes new titles to reach for that high bar. The design and gameplay are inventive while also intuitively familiar, realised through art, characters, and writing that overflow with cartoonish charisma.
📽 Demo Snapshot: Fight for France!
This demo was a lot of fun, though it's possible that the demo could be frontloaded to sell the game's main gameplay mechanics. What it presents is really good, but I hope there are a few surprises still waiting in the release version. At least I know there will be more bosses in addition to the demo's awesome bile-spewing zombie judge.
But that scepticism is just to, how do you say… répartir les risques? Hedge my bets? (thanks again, Google Translate). Sacre Bleu's demo is great, and I expect the full game will live up to its swashbuckling madness.
Sacre Bleu is set for release in 2025.
Explore The Game with Youtube Chapters:
📽 00:43 Betrayal!
📽 01:25 An ally helps
📽 04:04 The adventure begins!
📽 05:37 Fine Josephine's book
📽 06:13 Send back their arrows
📽 09:24 Avoid the spikes
📽 12:05 A stormy level
📽 12:59 Let's rumble!
📽 14:30 Cannon bot!
📽 19:25 Big fight incoming
📽 21:28 Into the sewers
📽 25:32 Swinging on skeletons
📽 29:24 Play some rebound
📽 31:04 Let's visit the kitchens
📽 32:53 Run from the sentry bot!
📽 39:15 Some tricky acrobatics
📽 40:17 Boss Fight!
📽 47:35 Finally beat the judge!
📽 50:08 Many more levels
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