Infinity Blade: Game Design Review
Sunday, December 12, 2010 at 5:06PM 
Infinity Blade was the #1 paid app in the App Store a few days, and deservedly so. As a player, I have to give it a grade of A because it's entertained me more than most games do these days, including games costing literally ten times as much. I'd rather give you opinion as a game designer than a player though, and from that standpoint, I rate it even higher. What's most notable is how much the designers did with so little. A simple combat mechanic and a small map go a long way.
Infinity Blade is "Punch-Out with swords, combined with stat optimization and a hidden object game." Skip the next couple sections if you already know how it works.
Description of Combat
The basic mechanic of slashing with your sword has a good visceral feel on the iPad's touch screen. The combat itself is kind of like Punch-Out. You can dodge the enemy's attacks and after you dodge a big one, you have a chance to hit back. You can also sneak in other hits before dodging the big one, but they do less damage. You can block so that no timing of dodge is needed, but the number of blocks is limited by how strong your shield is. You get an XP bonus if you don't break your shield, so it seems best not to use it. Parrying is more fun than dodging or blocking, and it caries higher risk and a bit higher reward. To parry, you must slash at the right time and angle to match the enemy's attack. Very cool.
You also have two meters, kind of like super meters in a fighting game (simply touch them to activate when they are full). The one in the upper left always stuns the enemy, letting you hit them a few times for free. The one in the upper right lets you do a magic attack (based on which ring you have equipped) that requires you to do a gesture to cast.
Description of Stat-Game
As usual, you defeat enemies to get money and items, which make you stronger, which let you beat more enemies. The not-usual part is that the items themselves are what level up, and your character's XP only goes up as the items gain XP. Once an item has its max XP, it no longer contributes to your character's XP when you defeat enemies. The dynamic that results from that mechanic is that you want to constantly swap your items around, making sure you have decent stats, and also a decent XP gain rate. This might sound annoying on paper, but giving you something to manage between fights is, I think, a big reason why the game doesn't get monotonous nearly as quickly as you'd expect. You get to go back and forth between combat and stat-optimization often, and each gives you a break from the other.
Movement
This is really one of the main ponts I want to make. You cannot walk around freely in Infinity Blade, you can only click on the note you want to go next, and a canned animation takes you there. On paper, this sounds bad. Really though, I think it was a very smart decision. Part of the reason they did this,
