Samson Combat Dev Diary: Brutal Hand-to-Hand Brawls, No Guns

Samson is slowly becoming one of the more anticipated releases of 2026, already hitting over 100k wishlists on Steam. In their latest dev diary on the games Steam page, Strati Zerbinis, one of the combat system programmers, jumped into to talk about the combat in the game and answer some questions about how combat plays in the upcoming title.

Zerbinis started by stating simply, “When you pick up the controller and hit the streets, we want you to feel like a hard-fighting tough guy, living in a city full of tough guys. Some people will step out of your way, and the rest of them are going to make you work for it.” Samson is no super-hero, taking punches and trading blows will hurt. You will get knocked down, and if you want to win you have to get back up again at least one more time than the people you are fighting.

While you should not expect many fair fights, they are for chumps, everything in the game is solved in hand-to-hand combat. Zerbinis noted that after starting with a mix of guns and light melee combat, it became clear that a gun was too simple, too fast. Grab a guy and slam him into a wall before turning on his buddy who is charging you. That is what Samson is about. How much fun can players have with their bare hands?

Just because the game is pure melee, does not mean players can expect long combos to memorize and hit every fight. Zerbini said that Samson is going for more of a wild bar brawl experience over tactical boxing. The fighting is built to encourage improvisation, stringing together moves on the fly over fixed combos, but be careful if you become too predictable your enemies will start to expect what you do next.

While the focus is on hand-to-hand combat with improvised weapons, Zerbini did hint that players should feel free to use the cars in Samson as much as they want, even if it's for more than driving. “Vehicles in Samson aren't just made for getting around, but are built to be part of the combat.”

Is Samson already on your wishlist? What are your expectations for the game as we get closer to a release announcement? Be a part of our Discord TheGamerzTheory and drop a comment.