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Infinity Blade was an action role-playing game developed by Chair Entertainment and Epic Games and released through the Apple App Store on December 9, 2010. It was the first iOS video game to run on Unreal Engine 3. In the game, the unnamed player character fights a series of one-on-one battles in a derelict castle to face the immortal God King. When in battle, players swipe the screen to attack and parry, and tap the screen to dodge and block enemy attacks. Upon defeat, the player restarts the game as the character's descendant with the same items and experience level.
The game was developed by a team of twelve people, who took two months to make a playable demo and three more to finish the game. Infinity Blade was intended to demonstrate the new iOS version of the Unreal Engine, and to combine the combat of Karateka and Prince of Persia with the loneliness of Shadow of the Colossus. The game received four free expansions that added new equipment, endings, and game modes.
Infinity Blade was the fastest-grossing app in the history of iOS upon its release. It made US$1.6 million in its first four days, and over US$23 million by the end of 2011. It was well received by gaming critics. Reviews praised the graphics and compared the mobile game favorably to . Critics also praised the swipe-based combat system, but split opinions on the cyclical gameplay as either addictive or repetitive. Chair later released an arcade game port and two sequels: Infinity Blade II and Infinity Blade III. Author Brandon Sanderson also wrote two novellas set between the games: and .
The game, along with its two sequels, was removed from the App Store on December 10, 2018, due to difficulties in updating the game for newer hardware.
In addition to combat, there is also a mild role-playing component. An experience point system levels up the player character and their equipment (weapons, armor, shields, helms, and magic rings). Equipment pieces have special properties and a predetermined number of experience points required to master them. Mastering a piece of equipment increases its sale value but decreases the player's experience gain by 20%. Upon leveling up or mastering a piece of equipment, players gain attribute points that can be allotted towards four character attributes: health, attack, shield power, or magic. Each point can only be allocated once and is a permanent upgrade to the character. Players can purchase new equipment using in-game money from sacks and treasure chests found throughout the castle, defeated enemies, and sales of unused equipment. In-game money can be Micropayment within the game.
The game follows a cyclical narrative structure in which the protagonist and his descendants individually explore a castle in a quest to battle the primary antagonist, the immortal God King. In the game's introduction, the non-playable protagonist has just finished this quest, but is slain by the God King. The player then assumes the role of the dead protagonist's descendant as he starts his journey at the beginning of the castle. This cycle, called a bloodline, continues after the player finally faces the God King and either dies or wins. The player may also choose to join the God King and terminate the cycle; upon doing so, the game resumes at the checkpoint before fighting the God King. Enemy difficulty increases with each bloodline cycle. Another bloodline ending is unlocked after purchasing the Infinity Blade item: the sword is placed into a pedestal in the castle's underground dungeons and three doors open. After then defeating each of the three "Deathless"—immortal beings like the God King—of increasing difficulty found within, a final fourth door opens, and the player faces a mechanized warrior guarding the high-tech chamber where the God King is reborn whenever he is killed. Upon defeating the mechanized warrior, the chamber is revealed to be controlled by an ancestor of the player character, who chose to serve the God King. After fighting the ancestor, the player character is told that the Infinity Blade can prevent immortals like the God King from resurrecting after death. The player is then given the option of either starting the next bloodline as they do when defeated, or resetting the game and starting New Game+ mode, which resets all gold and item progression but maintains the character's experience level, letting the player remaster the items and level up even further.
The game's swipe-based swordplay was based on Donald Mustard's desire for unique gameplay based on nuanced sword fighting and parrying. He described the game's influences as the combat of Karateka and Prince of Persia combined with the "lonely epicness" of Shadow of the Colossus. Chair sought to develop an experience that could be picked up and played for a minute (a single battle) or half an hour (a bloodline). They felt that many other developers accustomed to consoles were wrong to make iOS games that required long-playing experiences to feel meaningful, and so Chair developed the bloodline concept as a natural breakpoint. They also felt that mobile games like Infinity Blade with constant action elements went too long without giving the player time to relax and resulted in player exhaustion, and so Chair kept their battles short with brief cinematic pauses in longer battles. Chair showed their playable demo at the Apple conference on September 1, 2010, after weeks of rehearsal, and attracted much attention to the game. It was released on December 9, 2010. While Chair itself spent little on marketing, Apple used the game extensively in advertisements for its devices.
The music for the game was composed by Josh Aker, who had written the music for previous Chair games. The soundtrack was intended by Aker to be "intense" during combat, but to vary between "serene" and "otherworldly" outside battle. It is a mixture of live and synthetic instrument performances. Cello and nyckelharpa were the primary instruments used. Aker wanted to have "avant-garde performances" for the recordings. The soundtrack was sold as a digital album, Infinity Blade: Original Soundtrack, through several online music retailers. Chair began to develop the game's first update before the initial game was released. They intended only to add new monsters and features, but added the ability to purchase gold due to customer requests. Chair did not rebalance the game to incentivize in-app purchases. Work on The Deathless Kings update began immediately afterward. Chair felt that releasing several large, free updates to the game would increase their overall user base and result in more total sales due to word of mouth.
Infinity Blade was reviewed by several major gaming sites in addition to mobile game-focused sites. Critics praised the game's graphics heavily. IGN reviewer Hilary Goldstein said that it was "an absolute stunner for any handheld device and ushers in a new era of possibility for high-end graphics." GamePro Ryan Rigney called the game "downright gorgeous" and said that the graphics were almost at the level of an Xbox 360 game, which was echoed by John Meyer of Wired, who claimed that it had the best graphics of any iPad game. The reviewer for Edge further praised the art direction, especially with regards to the enemy and armor designs.
The gameplay was generally praised by reviewers, who typically found the combat engaging, but were split on the repetitive aspects of the game. 1UP.com's Matt Clark said that the sword gameplay "just feels right", while Mark Brown of Eurogamer said that the combat had an excitement factor that pushed players to keep on going for one more battle. Tracy Erickson of Pocket Gamer described the swipe-based combat system as "easy to understand, though tough to master", and Nick Chester of Destructoid said that although the combat was not very complicated, it was fun to play. The role-playing game elements were praised—Destructoid's Chester called them "satisfying", and IGN's Goldstein said that they added to the game's difficulty. Brown's review for Eurogamer, however, said that while good they were not as engaging as the combat, and the Edge review dismissed them as minimal. Reviewers had mixed opinions on the effectiveness of the bloodline system's repetition: Destructoid's Chester described it as addictive, and IGN's Goldstein agreed, but Erickson's review for Pocket Gamer said that the game had problems with repetition and Wired Meyer dismissed it as "repetitive ... as the title suggests". J. Nicholas Geist, writing for Kill Screen, focused his entire review on the cyclical nature of the game, treating its nature of repetition with small changes between each bloodline as a metaphor for life. Most reviewers found themselves between the two extremes, with Brown of Eurogamer simultaneously describing it as "alarmingly repetitious" but still addictive and 1UP.com's Clark saying that enjoying the game required getting past the repetition, despite being "stellar".
During the 14th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Infinity Blade for "Portable Game of the Year".
A novella by author Brandon Sanderson was released before both Infinity Blade II and III to serve as a Interquel between the games. Infinity Blade: Awakening was released as an e-book on October 4, 2011, to correspond with the announcement of Infinity Blade II. The story gives the protagonist of the first game a name, Siris, introduces the idea that the God King was one of multiple Deathless in the world, as is Siris, and has Siris and the assassin Isa journey to find the Worker of Secrets in order to kill the resurrected God King and the other Deathless. The second e-book novella, Infinity Blade: Redemption, was released on September 9, 2013, just before the third game. In it, Siris and the God King escape from their imprisonment by the Worker of Secrets, while extensive flashbacks show the rise of the Deathless in a future-Earth analog. While Siris disrupts the Worker of Secret's plans, the God King confronts and is killed by the Worker.
A Chinese version of the game for Xbox One and Android was published by Tencent on November 28, 2015.
A day after Epic Games removed the Infinity Blade trilogy from the App Store, the titular weapon made a crossover appearance in the winter-themed seventh season of Fortnite Battle Royale as a unique, very powerful melee weapon that can be obtained in a match, granting any player who finds it devastating abilities and extra survivability, at the cost of being unable to use other items. Three days later, however, Epic Games "vaulted" the weapon over concerns that it was too overpowered. Epic Games later brought back the Infinity Blade in February 2019 as a restricted item that is only available in the limited-time mode "Sword Fight", reducing its power and allowing multiple copies of it to be found from loot chests.
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