Glu Mobile announces melee-based dungeon grinder Eternity Warriors for iOS and Android

While Glu caught some criticism for Men vs Machines, a pure reskin of Gun Bros., it's doing something more sophisticated with future release Eternity Warriors.

Based on the underlying Gun Bros. engine, hence featuring an AI buddy player who follows you around, it's a melee-focused freemium 3D action game that has you fighting through waves of demons, zombies and other nasty dungeon-dwellers to unlock cool weapons and armour.

Hence, instead of lots of guns, your weapons are of the edged variety, with plenty of swords, hammers and axes to choose between.

Movement is provided by a left hand virtual stick, and touch buttons on the right hand side of the screen (where the second stick would be in Gun Bros.) for a slow/heavy attack and a fast/weak attack.

These work in terms of combos - slow-slow-fast etc - for pulling off more powerful attacks, while you have a fury meter that builds up through the action and can be triggered to launch a massive signature attack, depending on what weapon you're equiped with.

The result is a game that plays a bit like Gun Bros., but also feels sufficiently different, as well as likely appealing to a different type of audience.

Of course, the character structure is still very Gun Bros. You collect souls as you fight your way through the waves of enemies, converting these into the game's soft currency (coins) in the Forge.

You use coins to buy better weapons and items - there will be 48 weapons and 38 items of amour at launch - although getting some will require the game's hard currency, gems.

Helping you to gain loot, regularly selecting from your friends' warriors as your buddy will reward you with coins. The game will hook into further social elements through the Tavern, where you'll be able to connect with Facebook and/or Game Center in terms of inviting your friends to play the game, and bragging about your performance.

The game will also hook into the forthcoming Glu Games Network, which is expected to launch in the summer. And we'd expect it to get the same real-time multiplayer features that are being added to Gun Bros. at some point, assuming it finds an active audience.

Eternity Warriors is due to be released for iOS and Android in July.