If you thought that games on the iPhone and iPod Touch had to be silly-looking glorified minigames, Epic Games’ new Project Sword may blow your mind.
If you think of iPhone games, you probably think of silly little minigames like Angry Birds – short, bite-sized, and easy to control with a touch-and-drag interface.
Gears of War developer Epic Games thinks otherwise. Moments ago at a special Apple event, Epic president Mike Capps took the stage from Apple boss Steve Jobs to announce a project codenamed Project Sword for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad.
Powered by the exact same Unreal technology that runs Gears of War (and practically every other game this generation), Project Sword is an action-RPG that allows players to explore a fully 3D world in hopes of taking down the “legendary god-king.” Combat is controlled either by “slashing” your finger across the screen, or dragging-and-dropping special attacks (like a boot to the face) for less-twitchy players.
Also, for an iPod/iPhone/iPad game, it looks seriously fantastic. I certainly never thought I’d see graphics like that on a mobile game. Hopefully screens will be out soon.
Accompanying the announcement of Project Sword was the reveal of Apple’s Game Center, which is essentially the iOS version of Xbox Live. It’s a social network for gaming that should make it easier to play iProduct games with your friends – Capps and Epic creative director Donald Mustard instantly jumped into a head-to-head battle in Project Sword in a matter of seconds.
Game Center will be coming to iOS next week, and Project Sword is scheduled for release this holiday season. In other news, Epic has announced that the Unreal Engine 3 is now available for use on iOS, meaning that other great-looking mobile games won’t be far behind.
Update: We got a chance to look around the iOS Unreal Engine 3 tech demo Epic Citadel on the iPad, and it looks great. Take a look at our screenshot gallery above!
