Twin Blades: The Reaping Vanguard, published by Bulkypix and the first game developed by Press Start Studio, is a beautiful 2D hack 'n slash pitting a lone nun against a horde of zombies for the low price of $0.99 (US). It features gorgeous, anime inspired sprite art, great music, and an addictive gameplay. In addition, Twin Blades features online leaderboards, achievements, and more.

Twin Blades is a side-scroller in which you must move from left to right across the stage. You control a nun who must battle zombies using your scythe or various guns. As you progress, zombies come out of the ground to attack! The nun is controlled with an on-screen, virtual joystick and two on-screen buttons. The nun can move left, move right, jump, slash with her scythe, and shoot her gun. Using projectiles consumes a portion of your limited energy, but attacking zombies with the scythe replenishes that energy. You have a health meter in the corner that depletes when attacked by zombies and can be refilled by touching health potions that occasionally drop from dead zombies. When the meter empties, you die and are sent back to the main menu. You can continue playing from the level on which you died, but your score is reset to zero. You also have a heart counter that tracks how many zombies you have defeated (because you take their hearts when you kill them). These hearts are spent to purchase upgrades. Twin Blades features two types of zombie enemies, a normal zombie that's brownish and a more powerful zombie that's purple. Both zombies will damage you when they touch you, but the purple zombie will grab you, leaving you unable to move until you shake him off by physically shaking the iPhone. The game features three levels that make up a single day. Each day is comprised of the same levels, and the difficulty steadily rises with each day. Your ultimate goal is to survive all 31 days!

At the end of each day, you're given the chance to spend your zombie hearts on upgrades. You can either purchase weapon upgrades or character upgrades. When the game starts, your only projectile weapon will be the gun, which is a simple pistol. You can purchase a machine gun, flame thrower, ice gun, explosive gun, and holy beam. After purchasing a gun, you can also spend zombie hearts to make them more powerful. Each gun functions differently, and zombies have different death animations for each gun. My favorite gun is currently the holy beam, which can devastate many zombies at once, although freezing enemies in place with the ice gun is a lot of fun too! All the weapons are fun to use.

There are five character upgrades available. The first increases the amount of damage done with the slashing of the scythe. Another increases your maximum health. There is an air slash ability that lets you stab downward with your scythe on top of zombies. There are also two skills related to your energy. One increases the amount of energy that is restored when using your slash ability. This is very useful if you plan on using projectiles often. The second increases your energy capacity, which is also very useful.

The first thing I noticed about Twin Blades was how gorgeous it was. The game features beautiful, high-resolution sprites. The backgrounds are lush, and the colors (when in the brighter level) are vivid. The characters are fluidly animated, and the projectiles all have very cool animations. Wish such nice graphics, I wish there were more enemies and backgrounds! Luckily for us Press Start Studio agrees; more content is coming soon! Each level currently features different music, and the music is fantastic. The sound effects are nice but can be slightly annoying to someone listening but not playing (as sound effects in many games can be).

Twin Blades uses OpenFeint, a social gaming network. OpenFeint works across multiple games and gives each user a unique login. It has achievements, leaderboards, friends, and chatting, and Twin Blades uses these wonderfully. The achievements were created superbly to motivate players to try different things. For example, some want you to kill a certain number of zombies with a certain weapon. These are rather straight forward but give players a reason to try different weapons. The two most interesting achievements are awarded for finishing the game in a single life and for finishing the game without upgrading a weapon. I'm still working on those! The leaderboards also provide a great, competitive atmosphere that is very important in this type of game. Not only can you see your personal high scores and the high scores at the top of the leaderboards, but you can also see your exact position on the leaderboards. Again, this is great motivation to keep playing the game and to try different strategies.

While only out for a week, developer Press Start Studio is already planning to bring more content to the game. According to their blog at http://www.press-start-studio.com, their first update will be a new enemy called the "armored fella," a zombie wearing a large pot on his head. They also plan to bring bosses, a new slash, new levels, and a mini-map that allows players to choose which level they would like to play. These updates will be free to people who purchased the game!

Twin Blades is one of the most beautiful games on the iPhone and is a pleasure to see. It's fun although a little repetitive. Luckily the leaderboards and achievements make continuing to play worthwhile. I have had Twin Blades for almost a week and have played it for hours each day. I don't see myself slowing anytime soon. As if everything in Twin Blades wasn't enough, the new content should make the game even more fun. The leaderboards provide a great challenge, but Press Start Studio is taking the competition one step further. The developer is holding a high score contest that ends on the 25th of December. More details can be found on their blog, but the winner receives a 40" canvas of artwork from the game. Twin Blades is gorgeous, fun, and competitive with even more content on the way. I highly recommend playing Twin Blades: The Reaping Vanguard.