Blades of Brim Review

Developer: SYBO
Price: FREE
Version Reviewed: 1.0.0
App Reviewed on: iPhone 5

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While I have to admit that games like Blades of Brim seem to be almost as prolific as match-3 puzzlers and Threes! clones, it actually feels like progress rather than more of the same. It might just be the game that gets me back into endless runners (that aren’t Canabalt).

Blades of Brim is a third-person (i.e. over-the-shoulder) endless runner that plays much like you’d expect on the surface. Swiping left or right makes the runner move to that lane, while swiping up will jump. What’s different is how all of these moves also incorporate attacks that can be chained together. Plus you can pull of some rather fancy moves, regardless.

I could go on about the sense of progression and how Blades of Brim handles risk vs. reward with alternate paths and areas that “bank” everything you’ve collected so far in a run, or all the character upgrades like equipment and pets, but what I’ve really been having a blast with is simply running around swatting stuff with my sword.

Pretty much every move you make in Blades of Brim can segue into an attack, which can then be chained to another move/attack. Jumping towards airborne enemies will attack automatically, and you can zip between them by swiping back and forth to their respective lanes. Certain enemy types will force you to jump back and forth to avoid their attacks as well as hit them. If you jump and swipe into a wall, you’ll start running along the wall like a freaking ninja. And the list goes on.

I’ve run into (har-har) a couple of imperfections during a few of my attempts, however. The swipe controls are almost always spot-on, but there have been a couple of occasions where a right swipe read as a downward swipe or something to that effect. There was also an instance where a launch pad flung me into the air - as it should - but the opposite platform was too far away so I fell into a pit without a way to avoid it.

It’s going to take more than a couple of occasional irritants to derail. Blades of Brim, though. It’s a quality endless runner that’s both very fun and manages to feel fresh in a somewhat overcrowded market. But then what else could we really expect from the folks behind Subway Surfers?