One of the things that attracted me to mobile gaming a decade ago was how seemingly out of nowhere some amazing new game would release by some developer nobody has ever heard of. That sort of thing was frequent in the early years of the App Store, but is few and far between in the mobile gaming world of today. Well today is one of those days where some out of the blue new release has just knocked my socks right off. The game is called Wonder Blade ($2.99) and it’s from a two-person development team called Puppet Depot Game Studio. It’s a side-scrolling beat ’em up, but man that term does not do justice to the amount of variety on offer here compared to your typical brawler.
The game starts out as an arena fighter where you’re taking on waves of generic knights to win the favor of the King’s daughter. This serves as a tutorial of sorts as the game’s button commands and combat mechanics are introduced. Once it seems you’ve beaten all the knights and won the Princess over, an evil knight shows up with his huge rock golem and kidnaps her, thus setting off the most cliched video game storyline in history. It’s ok though because Wonder Blade does not take itself seriously one bit and exudes personality at every turn, essentially charming the pants off you within minutes.
Once the arena fight goes to hell, you’ll move forward through the castle fighting the evil knight’s minions as well as a couple of boss character...