"Finger Fencer" app loses points on difficult-to-deal-with controls

“Finger fencer” lets users channel their inner Mariel Zagunis, one swipe at a time.

Ah, the beginning of spring semester.  Since freshman year, it’s meant the same things: budgeting extra travel time to trudge through snow, sending scores of e-mails in an effort to arrange summer internships and classes, and…fencing.  All the time.  For me, the first two months of each year are filled with early-morning practices, all-day weekend competitions, and too many hours spent tearing my room apart to figure out what on earth I did with various parts of my uniform.  Obviously, there’s a payoff—I adore my teammates, and there’s no greater feeling than winning a hard-fought bout—but there are certainly times I wish I could sleep in past 6:45 in the morning.

Non-fencers, take note: Bob Smolenski’s new app, Finger Fencer, allows you to try your hand (or digit(s)) at swordplay without having to sacrifice your early mornings or Friday nights.  

You can still make faces like British foilist James Davis, though, if you want to. Source: modernfencing.tumblr.com

Taking on an AI opponent from first-person perspective, the user has the choice of three disciplines: epee (in which the entire body is valid target, and both fencers may score at once), foil (in which the torso is target, and a priority system called right-of-way determines who wins a point when both parties hit), and sabre (a slashing weapon which has right-of-way like foil, but different target area).  All users can try their hand at epee, but foil and sabre will cost $1.99 to unlock.  Because the app is not available on my iPhone and I’m not about to pay for an in-browser game, I only practiced the epee game.

The controls are simple in principle: swipe vertically to go forward or backward, or horizontally to deflect your opponent’s attack with a parry.  Three different speeds correspond to difficulty.  The game is very simple in its possible outcomes of an action: either one fencer scores via direct attack, both fencers score that way, or an attack is parried, with the retaliator winning the point.  While only the human player moves forward and backward, if you get “within distance” of the opponent, you will be attacked—and it’s up to you, finger-athlete, to parry and return the favor.

Like the real thing, bouting in Finger Fencer is often frustrating, but for different reasons.  For one, the action is incredibly jumpy, even on the lowest speed setting.  Before you can move to parry, the opponent has already scored; the delay between your finger’s movement and that of the blade onscreen is too great to develop an effective strategy, aside from merely moving your fingers really fast/slow and hoping you click at the right moment.  Instead of being challenging and mentally stimulating, Finger Fencer makes the user feel like every attack sequence is a crapshoot.  (To be fair, sometimes real fencing feels that way, too, but that’s mostly due to my own incompetence.)

Finger Fencer is a pretty cool idea: the realistic first-person perspective, especially, sets it apart from the “Mortal Kombat”, third-person viewpoint of many 2D fighting games.  However, the game itself—at least, the epee version—doesn’t deliver on the concept. The lack of continuity between input and output (finger movement and onscreen motion) makes it hard to determine exactly what of the former caused the latter.  Honestly, you’re better off playing actual finger fencing (that is, a mutual poking competition), and trading the tech-related annoyances for the annoyance of another human being trying to poke you.

Still interested?  Finger Fencer is available in-browser and for the Android here.