Enthusiasts of HIGHLANDER and STAR WARS-style sword-fighting will agree that the button-mashing of conventional controllers doesn’t do the art form justice.

That’s why SF author Neal Stephenson, whose work Starburst readers may be familiar with, is setting up a Kickstarter project to bring in $500,000 (£322,500) to get a ‘realistic’ sword-fighting game off the ground. At the time of writing, they have raised $247,000 or so, which is pretty impressive and shows there is a market out there for this sort of stuff.

Presumably named for the sound of a sword hitting another, CLANG will be a PC game that’s played using an off-the-shelf controller (to ensure anyone can play it).

If anyone’s afraid that this will end up taking up the majority of Stephenson’s time, they shouldn’t be – he’s said that the $500,000 will be used to get others to develop the game while he goes back to writing.

Details of the Kickstarter project can be found here, along with explanations of what you get for your money (the $10,000 investment reward is particularly cool) and what exactly they’re hoping to achieve. Even if you don’t plan to invest, it’s well worth a look. As they’re studying martial arts books to map different styles and swords into the game, it promises to be a game of great interest to anyone who’s tired of the broad strokes offered by the Wii and Kinect.

Thoughts? Share ’em in the Comments section or on Twitter @Starburst_Mag and hear them read out (possibly) on the Starburst Radio podcast, available on iTunes HERE.