Grade: B+
Create the ultimate weapon to defeat the demon hordes.
Bold Blade is the second game by the one-person indie dev group Ultra Runaway Studios. This was a short and straightforward battle RPG. You are a dude carrying a sword, and you swing it around in a big circle at your foes. As you go through the battle maps and swing your sword at the enemies, you get gold to add ever-increasing width and length to your blade. By the end, you are an unstoppable force of nature. It’s a simple premise, and a full playthrough takes about 30-40 minutes. I had a glorious time playing Bold Blade.
The sword is the main event
Bold Blade’s starting weapon is quite paltry. The initial enemy waves are difficult for our nascent hero. I died quite a few times. Each time you defeat an enemy, though, you get gold. Gold lets you buy power-ups at the blacksmith to increase the width and length of your sword. There are other powerup types for psychic powers, stamina, sword damage, health, and speed throughout the game, but that’s all garnish on the main course: a protagonist with a giant blade.
I expected at some point to cap out on the size of the blade, but the ceiling never came. By the end of the game, the blade was deliciously oversized. My sword took up the entire screen. I actually died a few times because I couldn’t see what was on screen since the blade was over-enormous.
Story beats and gameplay are simple
The game focused singularly on the Bold Blade gimmick, which was fine, but the enemies, combat, and story were on the side of being overly simple. The whole game took about 40 minutes to play. Once you beat the story once, you could start back from the beginning and keep working to increase the blade, but the enemies never leveled up alongside the hero in subsequent runs. Quickly, you got to a point where the game became hilariously easy. I had a good chuckle ending a combat scene just with two swings of my monitor size blade.
In addition to the main game, there’s also a bonus arcade game embedded called “Bug Rancher.” You shoot lasers to defend a location from bugs. This mini-game has literally nothing to do with the main adventure. Like much of the Bold Blade experience, it’s not to be taken too seriously, and I tried not to think too hard about it.
Overall Impression
While there were some issues, Ultra Runaway Studio executed the overall game well. I would never have had the chance to play Bold Blade if the developer hadn’t included it in the itch.io bundle. This utterly random adventure was a real highlight for me in the bundle review. Bold Blade was made by a single developer, Jesse Gallagher, and I was interested to see what else they had authored. There’s a really chic-looking first-person RPG written by the same author that’s totally hand-drawn, Paper Sorceror, that I might pick up next!
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