Infinity Blade Dungeons

Earlier this week on the latest installment of the Epic Games Podcast, Chair founder and creative director Donald Mustard confirmed what we long suspected: Infinity Blade: Dungeons was canceled. The title was at death's door when Epic parted ways with Impossible Studios (which had been formed from members of Big Huge Games following the collapse of 38 Studios).

Thankfully, Mustard offers encouragement for those hoping for more from Infinity Blade's world, suggesting that new games and other forms of media could be coming. In memory of this title's passing, we share with you a preview originally published on June 7, 2012.

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We take a violent tour of Epic Games' iPad dungeon crawler.

For Infinity Blade Dungeons, Epic is taking the series swipe based gameplay and applying it to an isometric action RPG in the vein of Diablo. But unlike Blizzards popular hack 'n' slash series, Dungeons is a strictly weapon based affair where the only magic attacks are tied to the weapons you forge. As the apprentice to the master of the forge, you explore dangerous dungeons to collect ore and other objects that allow you to build even more powerful weapons. As the prequel to the iOS series, your world eventually culminates into the crafting of the Infinity Blade itself.

As with the previous Infinity Blade games, the controls are simple but elegant. You swipe your finger to perform an attack, tap on your character to block, tap two fingers to dodge, and move your finger around the world to navigate. You can also perform special attacks with various weapons. Circling your character when he's surrounded by foes performs a whirlwind attack, and double-tapping an enemy allows your hero to perform a powerful smash attack. To execute a ranged attack, you can tap the weapon and draw a line to its intended target.

Moving through the waves of bears, spiders, wolves, and cat-like creatures, the apprentice collects gold and the occasional dropped piece of gear. The apprentice's main goal during his missions, however, is to mine ore. Once you find a deposit, a minigame begins that tasks you with chipping away the most precious metals you can. The horizontal meter moves quickly to the right and left, and by successfully tapping certain tough to hit areas on the meter you can recover platinum instead of lesser elements like iron.

Once you collect ore and clear out the dungeon (each of which only takes a couple minutes) the apprentice returns to the forge, where you can craft new weapons. By tapping away blemishes and scuff marks, your weapon will become more dangerous.  

Epic isn't talking about the particulars of the weapon leveling, the number of dungeons, or whether or not the game supports multiplayer, but judging from our brief two dungeon playthrough at E3 Infinity Blade Dungeons is shaping up to be another high quality iOS game. Look for the game to launch later this year, likely around the release of another Apple product.