Samson: A Tyndalston Story Hands-On Preview – “Intensity Over Scale”

All the way back in 2020, Christofer Sundberg, the founder of Avalanche Studios, established a new video game studio after taking some time off once he left Avalanche after it was acquired in 2018. That studio was (is) Liquid Swords, a new studio that, six years since its founding, is inching towards releasing its debut project: Samson: A Tyndalston Story.

Last week, ahead of Liquid Swords announcing Samson's April 8, 2026, release date, I got to spend some time hearing from Sundberg and the development team about Samson before going hands-on with the game myself. I also got to ask Sundberg and mission designer Donald Young a bunch of questions I had about the game, and about Liquid Swords. You'll be able to read that interview here.

For now, I have a bunch of thoughts about what I played, which was a little more than an hour into the game and its first couple of story missions before the end of the preview session.

Samson Hands-On Preview - "Intensity Over Scale"

"Samson is Not GTA, and It's Not AAA"

The quote in the headline of this preview, "Intensity over scale," comes directly from Sundberg, who said it while he was delivering what he prefaced as a bit of a disclaimer. When Samson was first being showcased, even from its first in-game screenshots that the studio showed off, players immediately began comparing it to Grand Theft Auto, a comparison that the studio had not made itself, according to Sundberg, nor was it one the studio wanted.

"Since this has been a hot topic ever since we showed that 10-second video of the city, we have been constantly compared to GTA, and we have never compared ourselves to GTA. Never ever. Samson is not GTA, and it's not AAA. It's a focused, mid-budget game built for intensity over scale, and priced accordingly, and it's designed around tight systems instead of endless content sprawl. So our ambition is different, our scope is different."

It was a significant way to start the presentation, but while its intention was to try and get me and the rest of the attendees not to compare Samson to GTA, while I can't speak for everyone else who was there, it definitely made me do nothing but constantly think of GTA while I was playing Samson.

And I know I probably won't be alone in that. I mean, GTA is such a dominant force in the industry and is a franchise that hundreds of millions of players have deep memories and connections to. A game just has to be set in a big city where you play as a criminal who can drive around and steal other cars to be reminiscent of GTA for most people.

Though, as you might expect, the creative director talking about the video game he is leading a team to build knows what the game they're making is and what it isn't. It's definitely not GTA, and for my money, it's all the better for it.

You'll step into the shoes of Samson McCray, the best getaway driver Tyndalston has ever seen, who took a job in St. Louis that he probably would have driven in the opposite direction of, if he knew it would end with him in prison, and while stuck there, his sister is forced to make a bad deal with worse people just to keep her brother breathing.

But Samson isn't prescient, so after the St. Louis job goes south, he winds up back in Tyndalston, appropriately in the city's South End district, and by the terms of the deal that was cut, he's got a massive debt he needs to work off.

That's the narrative establishment for the gameplay loop, which sees you get in your car (which Liquid Swords calls the 'Magnum Opus'), and drive across Tyndalston to one of eight job types each day, trying to earn enough to pay your daily dues and keep debt collectors off your back. I got to experience a few different job types in the time I played, jumping between jobs that got me behind the wheel and ones that called for fisticuffs.

I much preferred how the brawling hand-to-hand combat felt over the driving missions, though I chalk some of that up to the technical issues I had. Myself and the rest of the press that attended this preview were playing an early build, with plenty of known bugs, and even though the release date isn't too far off, I'm not going to knock a version of the game people will (hopefully) never see on their devices. That said, I'll be looking forward to getting a better feel for the driving when the game is actually out.

Even with my issues, the missions I played did make me understand what Young and Sundberg are talking about when they say Samson is about "Intensity over scale."

A Story Split by Action Points

Part of why I got that comes from Samson's visuals. It's a very good-looking game for such a grimy-looking city, and its action sequences have a great cinematic feel to them with the way the camera zooms in when Samson gets into a fight or how the action slows down when you take out another car in a huge crash.

Moving through all of your missions in a single in-game day will have you go back-to-back with those kinds of moments, which, as long as missions can keep an element of variety to them, probably won't get old very quickly. Or, at least, even if it does, as we learned from the FAQ that Liquid Swords put out in December 2025, the main story should only take you about 10 hours to finish up. You can more than double that game time with side content, but it can be a shorter, action-packed experience if you want it to be.

Especially with how the choices you make in each in-game day really dictate the kind of experience you get. Each day in Tyndalston is broken up into three sections: Noon, Evening, and Night. Each of those sections includes two Action Points, and accepting missions consumes Action Points. If each mission requires two APs, you'll do three missions that day.

Every new day moves the story forward, and every choice you make - or don't make - impacts how South End sees your Samson McCray. The missions you'll see pop up on your map each day that'll pay enough to help you square away your debt seem to consistently consume two APs, but they're not the only source of missions in Tyndalston.

You'll also be able to find missions to go on throughout the city, just by paying attention to what's happening around you and what NPCs are saying. Liquid Swords calls it the game's "Story Deck system," which spawns small events across the city for you to happen upon.

Granted, this was not an element of Samson I got to play around with in this preview; I only had so much time to play the game, and I was trying to get a handle on the game's core content, so I really only played more campaign-focused missions. But what makes these 'story deck' missions intriguing is the possibility of where they'll take you. I stopped and listened to plenty of NPC chatter when moving from mission to mission, and I'm looking forward to pulling at those many threads in the full release.

In my interview with Young and Sundberg, Young used the example of Story Deck missions as to how your daily choices impact your experience. Stopping to help someone might mean you don't get the chance to take on a different mission that day, causing you to be short on your daily debt payment. But helping that person will have an impact on how the people of South End and Tyndalston see you, just like not making that choice will also have an impact.

Ultimately, we won't know how much of an impact those choices will really have until playing the full game, but the impression I got was that you can ignore those smaller events without little consequence beyond missing out on that section of the game. But again, that's only after spending a little more than an hour with the game.

'KISS' Action

Like some of the best action movies ever made, Samson doesn't try to fix what isn't broken. Its brawling hand-to-hand combat follows simple rules. You have a light and heavy punch, you can dodge, you can parry, but most importantly, you can smash up the environment around you with your enemies' faces.

Creatively using your environment to dispatch your foes one-by-one is something that will never get old for me, and it's an element of close-quarters combat design that is a true art when it's done well. Again, these are all just impressions based on a short time with it, but what I saw is that Liquid Swords is doing its best to put you in a variety of situations with more than just the same few set pieces around you repeated across the city.

It's car combat also follows a similar 'KISS' mantra, because when you're in the heat of a chase, landing a solid blow that sends the car you're chasing flying into the air off the curb is always cool. You do have to take proper care of your car; it won't repair itself after you toss it around trying to hit other cars. But how that impacts the game's pacing is another element I couldn't try due to my limited time with the game. Still, it's an interesting element to note that has plenty of potential for what it could add.

A Bang for Buck Approach That I Hope Pays Off

As Sundberg clearly stated, Samson: A Tyndalston Story isn't trying to be a big AAA game. It's a smaller scale, AA game, focused on deep exploration within a specific setting, intense vehicular and hand-to-hand combat, with a grounded and gritty story.

I'm not so sure it'll be able to execute on the story front. For what it's worth after playing so little of it, I'm not immediately impressed by any of the writing or performances so far. That could change of course, and I hope it does, because if Samson can deliver a story that's on par with the gameplay experiences it has on offer, this could easily be one of the best games in 2026.

Especially when you add that this game is only coming in at $25. Sundberg has been clear on his personal X (formerly Twitter) account that he'd rather overdeliver at a lower price, and it seems like he and the team at Liquid Swords are on the right path to achieve that.

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