Posted May 12, 2022
God of Blades. This is really a mobile game, but there's a Windows version still kicking around on Amazon, so I risked picking it up for a few bucks while buying other stuff. It's a sort of runner/melee combat game in which you control a guy called the Nameless King as he slices his way through hordes of enemies. The controls are very simple - swiping/pushing up, right, or down executes a certain type of attack while left does a parry. There are five campaign levels and a few extra modes for two-player fighting or just seeing how far you can go to rack up your score.
The game is reasonably fun and pretty short, but what really distinguishes it its sense of style. It's strongly inspired by 1970s sci-fi/fantasy book covers and prog rock album art, so the landscapes are trippy and the enemies look a bit like Chaos demons from Warhammer (Warhammer itself taking some influence from old books). As you get points, you unlock new swords you can choose from, each of which has a proper name and is introduced with some flavor text that reads like something you'd find in a Michael Moorcock story. Levels are introduced with covers of imaginary fantasy novels ("Guardian of the Black Clefts" by C. Percival Briggs!). I'm all about this stuff, so I found it very appealing.
Since it was primarily a mobile game, you can still find places to download the APK but it's no longer supported by newer phones, which is why I decided to just try the Windows version. The main difference is that the PC version lacks a mode that was supposed to check your location and direct you to nearby libraries to unlock rewards in the game.
The game is reasonably fun and pretty short, but what really distinguishes it its sense of style. It's strongly inspired by 1970s sci-fi/fantasy book covers and prog rock album art, so the landscapes are trippy and the enemies look a bit like Chaos demons from Warhammer (Warhammer itself taking some influence from old books). As you get points, you unlock new swords you can choose from, each of which has a proper name and is introduced with some flavor text that reads like something you'd find in a Michael Moorcock story. Levels are introduced with covers of imaginary fantasy novels ("Guardian of the Black Clefts" by C. Percival Briggs!). I'm all about this stuff, so I found it very appealing.
Since it was primarily a mobile game, you can still find places to download the APK but it's no longer supported by newer phones, which is why I decided to just try the Windows version. The main difference is that the PC version lacks a mode that was supposed to check your location and direct you to nearby libraries to unlock rewards in the game.
Post edited May 12, 2022 by andysheets1975