Die by the Sword is a swordfighting action-adventure video game developed by Treyarch and published by Interplay Productions under their Tantrum Entertainment imprint on March 27, 1998.

The game allows players to independently command the movement and swordfighting of their in-game avatars; running, jumping and turning with one hand, while simultaneously slashing, stabbing and parrying with the other.

[3] The game allows the player to fully control their sword arm, removing the need for pre-recorded animations and statistically based gameplay.

However characters featuring a weapon for either arm can only be properly controlled by keypad or by using predefined moves, due to their unorthodox movements.

Turning, jumping, and other acrobatics can be used in tandem with sword control to add velocity to the weapon, increasing its damage potential significantly.

This system encourages multiple hits to a specific region on the body, thereby slowly cutting the opponent, and reducing his effectiveness.

Interplay's Alan Pavlish attributed the failure to the game's control scheme and "a dark period when it slipped nine months, so it lost momentum.