Editors Note [09/04/2026]: The Day One patch added to the game solved the game-breaking bug experienced during this review.
Stockholm’s Liquid Swords appear to be introducing themselves as old souls with their debut game, Samson: A Tyndalston Story.
First of all, its namesake protagonist is a grizzled vet of the mean, mean streets of Tyndalston, who didn’t think he was ever going to return, and yet here he is, among the trash and the fallen.
Likewise, it plays like a game from two or three generations ago. A game that doesn’t want to give you a big open world and hundreds of things to do, but instead asks you to keep doing a few things to service an in-game debt while navigating a small world with very little beauty and far too much darkness.
Playing like Driver meets Max Payne, and coming to us by way of the minds behind the more recent Mad Max and Just Cause, Samson: A Tyndalston Story expertly grabs the atmosphere of those late ’90s and early ’00s games, which is so refreshing. I just wish it did its thing with a little more polish and refinement.
Driving your way out of debt
Samson: A Tyndalston Story opens up with you meeting Irish enforcer Samson McRay, who is on a boat back to his hometown after a getaway driver job in St. Louis gone wrong. Samson returns to the streets that built him, burdened by a $100,000 debt, with his beloved sister left as collateral.
Tyndalston has always been a shithole, but Samson finds it way worse than when he left it, as the city folk in the mainland have cut off its south island in hopes of isolating the area’s extreme crime. A new gang of young gangsters named Crow Lane are peddling White Whisper, a new drug that puts all others to shame. And those who Samson used to help protect the streets with honourable crime have been losing their control.
Having to make ever-growing daily payments towards his debt, Samson is forced to take on jobs.
This is where Samson: A Tyndalston Story attempts to innovate by making you repay the debt through a roguelite run system, where Samson begins each day divided into three cycles — “Noon,” “Evening,” and “Night.”
Each cycle has two Action Points you can spend on jobs, which take two or three Action Points. Once you’ve spent these Action Points, Samson will return to his truly disgusting bachelor pad and be forced to pay his debt, whether you came up with the day’s required amount or not.
As you begin to rack up days, Samson will progress through about 25 abilities intended to help you rule the streets, including bonuses like earning extra Action Points for making your daily payments. Miss a full payment, and you’ll find yourself fighting a group of hitmen from St. Louis the following day, with harder groups coming the more days you miss.
Each cycle, you will also be assigned a random skill buff, which will either help you determine which kind of job you undertake, or impact you in no way at all — it’s your choice.
Fist fights are a simple affair, as Sampson has four conceivable moves. He can perform a light attack for speed, a heavy attack for damage, a parry that breaks defence when timed right, he can use a melee weapon or throw it, and he can perform a finisher when you’ve landed enough back-to-back hits.
For the most part, hand-to-hand combat feels sluggish, with hit boxes being seemingly too small. Samson often slides awkwardly and does really poorly in handling later combat situations where he is fighting multiple people at once. However, it is serviceable, with player-initiated finishers feeling delectable — especially when you get the ability that refills health on successful finishers.
Driving is a key to success in Samson: A Tyndalston Story. Samson comes with his own GTO-dupe that has better health than most of the other three or four car models present, and also includes nitrous oxide. There is also a sturdy armoured van that you can find at certain points around the map, which you will always want for the missions you need to engage in car combat — that is, unless you want to get really good at ramming cars and vans from the side. For the most part, cars are enjoyable to use, aside from some minor handling issues that feel awkward at first, but you will likely come to compensate for them.
Samson’s working for the weekend
There are two categories of jobs Samson can undertake, with several more subcategories. The first is on foot jobs, which always lead to Samson needing to beat someone, or a group of someones, up. Though it changes this up by offering variations where Samson will have to find five objects scattered around a small section of the already small map while beating on a few people, and then escaping the reinforcements. Or he’ll have to tail someone until they lead him to a group to be beaten up. Finally, there is a wave mode where Samson will have to take on a few waves of enemies.
Next up are the driving jobs, where Samson is either acting as a getaway driver, hopefully more successfully, racing against a clock in a time trial, or knocking folks off the road in vehicular combat.
Along the way, Samson will be offered “Chapter Missions,” which tell a story about our honourable enforcer taking a lot of time and a lot less money in order to help heal the streets of Tyndalston…by doing exactly the types of jobs hes already been doing, only now without the ability to choose what kind of job and subcategory of job you are undertaking.
This is where Samson: A Tyndalston Story begins to spin its wheels. Jobs become samey really, really quickly. And with such a large debt to pay back, you’ll be doing a lot of them. I’ve found myself wishing that things changed up a little more, were introduced more slowly, or that there was a difficulty spike or new skill thrown at me to learn and master.
There’s no happiness in these streets
Look deep enough and you will find a faded beauty to Tyndalston’s Ozarks rustbelt appearance. Yet, it is a city filled with immense unhappiness. Samson: A Tyndalston Story is very rarely a happy one. Walk around, and you’ll find encounters with citizens who have seemingly fallen to the lowest of lows.
Driving and walking around the puddle-soaked streets, I came across a woman who tried to sell me White Whisper, which turned out to be her daughter’s ADHD medication, and when I asked her to go home to her kid, she fought me the first time I came across her because I showed compassion instead of threatening her.
A man thanked me for beating up some gangsters who were working with his landlord to evict him, only for him to tell me that they would just be back next week to collect or boot him out again.
Another man asked me to run over him with his car and make it look like an accident so that his wife could get enough insurance money to pay out a ransom that a gang of pill-pushers had on his daughter. When I paid him a little money towards the ransom, he commented that he felt these streets would have no kindness. Samson: A Tyndalston Story feels as though it has no kindness. The citizens of its streets make the NPCs in Lumiose City seem absolutely jovial.
For the most part, the severe Max Payne vibes are fine. But as with so many other things in Samson: A Tyndalston Story, you’ll run into these same sad stories and characters over and over, and you’ll likely find yourself craving some happiness.
Speedbumps and other bugs
My biggest problem with Samson: A Tyndalston Story is that, unless it is patched on Day One, it launches in a pretty buggy state.
Keeping in mind this is the first game from a Double A dev team with limited staff and resources, there are points where you’ll find your high-octane fighting slows thanks to bugs that can make the game simply no fun.
I have found that a significant amount of the fighting challenges involving waves of enemies will eventually come to a halt. A meathead or two that you need to pummel gets stuck somewhere in the arena that is out of your way. And you’ll have to run around until you find them.
I’ve had more than a few Unreal Engine crashes that have caused assets to entirely not load into the map at all. In one case, I was partaking in a job where I needed to lay some hurt on three crooks in a city square. Having completed the same job a few times, I knew where the guys I was looking for would post up. However, while their markers had loaded into the made, they had not — forcing me to abort the mission and lose a couple of valuable Action Points.
Another time, one car I was supposed to run off the road was also loaded in only as a marker, meaning I had to sacrifice another two Action Points.
Animations can also cause things to lock up. For example, I tried entering one Chapter Mission with a weapon a few times and found that when the cutscenes ended, Samson was locked in motion. This stopped when I rebooted the game and ditched my held weapon before triggering the cutscene.
There’s one seeming bug I can’t forget, the one that has prevented me from moving forward in Samson: A Tyndalston Story. That’s right. During my time with this game, I reached a point in the Chapter Missions where I was tasked with speaking with an NPC. Each of the many times I tried speaking with that NPC, he would break up the conversation and walk away, and as I was granted control of Samson again, it would be without any guidance on what to do next. This bug has become game-breaking for me, as I am unable to continue progressing through the story.
Verdict
Samson: A Tyndalston Story is a bit of an odd experience overall. It really feels as though it is of a gaming generation long since gone, and that appears to be its selling feature. This is very much a game that takes the roguelite runs formula and applies it to the smaller, tighter scripted games of the early-’00s. Games that were more linear experiences with only a handful of mechanics to master.
I’ve been loving the feels similar to those found in games from when I was just starting to get into gaming. However, I’ve also come to expect modern comforts and performance — especially from a game doing 2000-like gaming in 2026. And, unfortunately, Samson: A Tyndalston Story is currently hitting a few roadblocks and spinning its wheels. I hope this game finds the gas soon.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: PC
The game is so broken you can’t progress any further and you gave it a 6?