Mordhau

About

Mordhau is a medieval first-person multiplayer indie game that heavily emphasizes melee combat. Since its late-April 2019 release, the game became very popular, selling about 500,000 copies in just one week. The game's significant following and a prominent fanbase has led to the creation of memes and parodies centered around the game.

History

On March 8th 2017, a Kickstarter^[1] campaign was launched by the Slovenian indie developer studio Triternion, which did not fully fund the game but still managed to raise $300,000. The game was advertised to run on Unreal 4.

Two years later, on April 29th, 2019, the game was released to much anticipation. The game became the top selling game on Steam.^[2] The game sold so quickly that Triternion's servers have temporarily crashed due to the overwhelming amount of players.

Reception

The game was widely praised upon released, receiving a score of 81/100 on Metacritic.^[3] The series was praised for its solid combat system and addictive gameplay with a "high skillcap," though performance has been noted as having some issues.^[4]

Online Presence

The game's fun and chaotic nature attracted many gaming YouTubers, which caused the game's popularity to soar even further. For example a video by CornHolePatrol gained over 710,000 views (shown below, left). Another by Slimecicle gained over 378,000 views (shown below, right).

With the ever growing popularity of Mordhau, the fanbase has generated a substantial amount of memes, often mixing with other medieval and knight related memes such as crusades, DEUS VULT and Praise the Sun (examples shown below).

The Lute

One of the most unique features of the game is a lute players can wield. It can be used as a humorously weak weapon to humiliate foes and entertain fellow players and can also be played as an actual instrument. Although originally, players could only make crude notes and very short verses with the lute, tech-savvy players discovered that by using the right input macros and bots, they could use the lute play any melody they want, resulting in gameplay videos where players play humorous melodies on the lute. For example, user BasildoomHD has posted several video compilations of jokes with the lute, gaining over 327,000 views and 91,000 views (shown below).

Search Interest

External References