Phosphor Games Announces Horn - Could This Be An Infinity Blade Killer?
by Tommy Ly
June 27, 2012
At the Zynga Unleashed event held in San Francisco yesterday, a new program called Zynga Parters was announced. Phosphor Games, creators of the eerie first-person horror action game, Dark Meadow, is one of the first game studios to show what their collaboration with Zynga will bring. According to IGN, Phosphor Games has revealed their next title: Horn.
Players will take control of Horn, a blacksmith's apprentice whose goal is to find out why the local villagers are turning into monsters.
Horn's announcement trailer gives you a peek of what to expect:
IGN had time to spend with a playable build of the game, stating that Horn is an action-adventure game played from a third-person perspective. There are no virtual controls for movement, as players move by tapping where they'd like to move, while other controls are executed by contextual on-screen inputs.
On the game's combat system, IGN states:
The combat I experienced was all one-on-one. The camera locks-on to your single opponent, allowing you to circle around them Zelda-style. This makes it easy to dodge-roll away from enemy attacks and counter-attack with swipes of your own.At the moment, details on Horn are scarce. However, judging from IGN's screenshots, it's safe to assume that Horn has been built with Unreal Engine, the same engine used by Dark Meadow. Unfortunately, the Zynga partnership may be a sign of something (potentially) bad: Horn being a freemium title. The signs are there: the Zynga partnership (Zynga is pretty big on in-app purchases) and the fact that Dark Meadow went the freemium route. Also, I can see some gameplay elements being tied to in-ap purchases. You play as a blacksmith's apprentice, so it'd be a safe bet to assume there will likely be some type of weapon leveling system, which in-app purchases will surely catalyze. As always, we'll keep you posted on Horn. I'm pretty excited, as it looks like a mashup of a Legend of Zelda title, Infinity Blade, and Team Ico's Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Freemium or not, are you excited to see more details emerge on Horn? Source: IGN