Est. 2019 · Shoreditch back room
Savage guides for players who read the patch notes twice.
We ink long-form boss breakdowns, indie deep-dives and honest hardware teardowns — riso-printed in spirit, pixel-sharp in practice. No hype, no sponsored scores.
A note from the founder
Started on a jammed office printer. Still runs on stubbornness.
I began SavageBattleVanguard folding forty photocopied pages of a Bloodborne guide on a Hanbury Street kitchen table. Readers wanted the version nobody else would write — the one that admits a boss is badly tuned and tells you exactly which ledge cheeses it.
Seven years on we are three writers, one photographer and a very tired risograph. Every guide is played to completion before it ships, every hardware review is bought at retail, and no score is ever traded for early access.
— Marcus, editor & chief button-masher
Why readers stick around
Us versus the algorithm mill
| What you get | SavageBattleVanguard | Typical review farm |
|---|---|---|
| Games finished before scoring | Always — credits roll first | Two hours, then guesswork |
| Sponsored or paid scores | Never, clearly labelled ads only | Blurred lines |
| Boss & build guides depth | Frame-by-frame, 3,000+ words | Scraped wiki bullets |
| Hardware sourced at retail | Bought with our own money | PR loaner units |
| Physical zine edition | Quarterly riso print | None |
Recent ink
Browse by desk
Reader voices
Shouted from the comments
The Radahn breakdown saved my sanity — the note about staggering him during the meteor phase is the only guide that actually got me the kill.
Bought a handheld purely on their teardown. They flagged the drift risk on the sticks months before anyone else and they were dead right.
The quarterly print zine is gorgeous. Ink smudges and all — it feels like a mixtape for people who still finish games.
Support the desk
Membership tiers
Reader
For the casual lurker
£0/mo
- ✓ Every online guide, free
- ✓ Weekly patch-note digest
- ✓ Comment & request topics
Vanguard
For the completionist
£6/mo
- ✓ Everything in Reader
- ✓ Early access boss guides
- ✓ Ad-free reading
- ✓ Members-only Discord
Print Club
For the collector
£12/mo
- ✓ Everything in Vanguard
- ✓ Quarterly riso-printed zine posted
- ✓ Numbered art print each issue
- ✓ Name in the back-page credits
Pitch, question or fan mail
Reach the back room
Got a boss we should break, an indie we should hunt, or hardware we should tear apart? Send it over. We read everything, usually with coffee going cold.
- Phone
- +44 20 7437 7284
- Studio
- 58 Hanbury Street, Shoreditch, London E1 5JL
- [email protected]
- Desk hours
- Mon–Fri, 10:00–18:00 GMT