SERVICE𝄂

Set in an alternate “what if” version of France in the 19th century where the world is now ran by vampires, with the player, a vampire hunter, acting as part of a liberation force set on freeing humans from the bloodlust reign.

Announced on June 11, 2013, Bloodmasque is actually a reworking of an untitled seventh generation oriented project headed by Ryutaro Ichimura, producer of several Dragon Quest games, with the shift to iOS happening midway through development.

Teaser concept image for the job recruitment page.

Pre-production on the game began as far back as 2011, when a number of job recruitment pages appeared on Square Enix’s website for what would later become Bloodmasque, with a single image, above, being the clue that connects those listings to this, as well as the fact that they required Unreal Engine 3 knowledge, which is the engine in which the game was ultimately released on.

Ichimura reported on Famitsu that the team had gone on trips around the globe in order to build the game’s world, which would eventually bet set in Paris. Many locations in the game are modelled from their real world counterparts, since recreating a faithful account of Paris’ most famous locations was one of the game’s goals, going as far as using prints and posters from famous art nouveau artists from the period like Théophile Alexandre Steinlen.

At the time of the game’s release the app itself was sold at a “premium” price, for $6.99, with it having its first free period soon after. These free periods repeated themselves within short periods of time, eventually leading to the game’s premium price being revoked at all and transitioning to a free app. Early on the game was praised for its high end visuals, but criticised for containing elements common in F2P games despite not being free, such as player ranks, a rare currency given mostly in small amounts which otherwise had to be bought via IAP, as well as a stake system that rewarded players who had gold or silver stakes with better items, acquired rarely in-game or bought with real money.

Despite that, the game managed to crack the top grossing and selling charts on iOS during its first week, but eventually it fell of them, perhaps one of the reasons why its service ended so prematurely.

A typical battle.

As far as gameplay is concerned, battles were essentially using a clone of Infinity Blade’s battle system, where you control a single character pit against a single foe, you tap to strike or guard, and swipe to evade attacks. Blood masque had a bunch of unique systems in place however. Each hunter, the player’s avatar in the game world, was made by the player in the game’s character creation process, which besides including the standard options allowed them to use their own faces via the “Photo Masque” feature, where the game captured the player’s face using the front facing camera and then put it on the character model. The hunter is the only character the player could control, but battles could have up to two more participants: NPC characters in place for each determined quest, and another player’s hunter, which were controlled by the game’s AI. Additionally the game had a weakness system, where players could align to one of four “clans”, basically elements, before battle, with certain monsters being to one or the other. Each clan also had its own special “limit break”, unleashed after dealing or receiving a certain amount of damage. 

Exploring Paris, you can see the posters here, as well as the NPCs.

Outside of battle and unlike Infinity Blade, players were free to roam designated areas of Paris in a full 3D environment, an uncommon thing at the time for mobile games, filled with randomly placed treasure and NPCs to interact with, however these areas were, while highly detailed, very small and without much to offer.

Master Keene acts as your guide early on.

The game’s story was short but serviceable, with hard “yarikomi” bosses unlocked after beating it. Subsequent updates added new quests and equipment, as expected, but sadly the hints of a new story put in the ending never came to fruition. Sadder still is the fact that Ichimura revealed how, similarly to Square Enix’s own Fabula Nova Crystallis, they’d developed a whole “bible” of mythology and events spanning centuries for the game, of which Bloodmasque only showed a portion. Seeing as how the game was terminated, it is unlikely we’ll ever see the other events in the same setting, but the possibility is there.

On a more personal note, I got the game the day it was released and beat it shortly after, never purchasing any other thing than the base game. Sometimes I did feel like certain quests were rather hard for my level and equipment, making me wonder if those were that way to get players to buy IAP, but I never did and managed to finish it anyway. I never managed to beat one of the post-ending bosses however. I enjoyed what I played, but I also felt that the game could probably have been better had they not implemented the usual friend summon and extra currency mechanics. Perhaps if the game had been released on consoles as it was intended originally things would be different, but alas, it didn’t happen.

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Further reading:

NeoGAF thread http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=633471

Official site http://bloodmasque.com/christmas/en/