Last updated on December 12th, 2025 at 01:13 am
Forge Ahead – Be a Blacksmith – Casual Game Review
Forge Ahead – Be a Blacksmith is a Casual/Simulation game from Lion Studios LLC, first launched in 6th November 2019.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 85,077+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Forge Ahead – Be a Blacksmith Stand Out
Strap on your boots and forge ahead!
Mine metals, hammer them into shape, and forge the best swords you can!
This is not your normal simulation game. Break rocks to discover exotic gems. Forge them into beautiful swords and show them off in your armory. The better the materials you find, the more money you make! The more money you make, the better the swords you can unlock. You will be the envy of every blacksmith in the kingdom.
Stop what you are doing now, it’s hammer time!
Game Features:
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Simple but addicting mechanics
Tap away at the rocks. Discover precious metals. Hammer the molten metal into sharp shiny swords. -
Run your own Armory
Show off the swords you craft on the weapons rack. Can you make the best? -
Keep them coming!
Keep finding new gems to make better swords. The better the sword the more you make! -
Earn offline
No need to always be on. You still earn money as you are signed off.
Discover your inner blacksmith and forge the best swords. Watch the molten metal cool off into your beautiful creations. Good luck putting down Forge Ahead!
Visit https://lionstudios.cc/contact-us/ if have any feedback, need help on beating a level or have any awesome ideas you would like to see in the game!
From the Studio that brought you Happy Glass, Flip Trickster and Love Balls!
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This Casual game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Forge Ahead – Be a Blacksmith is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 26th July 2022
Recent improvements include:
Bug Fixes
Download & Availability
Forge Ahead – Be a Blacksmith is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Forge Ahead – Be a Blacksmith on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Hiii we love this game plz ad more material like emerald or stuff also plz make the ore more distinguishable from each other and ya more blades and hilts n stuff we love this game 10/10 ya.
We love the game but we wish it got more updates.
It's honestly a great game, truly, there's not many out there that can match it's simplistic nature, but… As you play more and more… It just feels like something is missing from the game… The styles to choose from vary greatly, not too many, not too little. Mining is kinda annoying, and there is ads, but it's to be expected. The mining is understandable to be a hassle, as that's how rare swords exist. The ads are there because… Well… They're really the greatest and probably biggest way of getting income for the game, we will admit, having to watch one to advance here and there… Is kinda pathetic… But, we get it. It's a great game, and we do recommend it as a great time killer.
The sword options are kind of cool.
Just hope they continue to update it.
This game is awesome and fun to play when your bored. The ads are space out well so its not every second. Great game although it needs updates. We think its a good idea to add more ores to collect and find. Also maybe add more capacity to the crucible. And if your going to add more ores, please make one line or neon green. We think it would make the sword look very cool. Last thing, maybe for an update you can add a place were you can forge or mix metals together and make different or better materials to craft swords. Thats all we have over all great game! Play it on the bus every day on the way to school. Thats all we have so if you read this please add at least one of the updates suggested. Bye and Thank you for your time! :).
This game is really fun to play but it needs more content and it needs to be easier to tell different ores apart from each other.
This game is actually good for what it is and to our knowledge the only game like it, we just wish the developers would put a little bit more love into the game for example in the sword handle area it kinda bothers us while we play this game that the handle of the sword is just the same thing as the blade theres no actual grip. And thats why the game for us its a 4 out of 5 but for what it is its good.
We downloaded this game because it really like swords and Lord of the Rings, we realized that it just the same thing over and over. Well, we tried upgrading our sword mold but it just sent us back to the normal peasant mold. And it just always get the same gems of wht ever. And we tried upgrading our little bowl to get more gems in there but we always just get four. Any way, on the lighter side, we sorta liked the bit where you hammer the but it gets old.
We love this game but we feel like there should be something where you can upgrade something so there is more chance of getting a certain material. Overall great game love it.
If you are reading we want it to where before testing there is an option where you can ad an ability like spin attack for ex you can decide the abilities but we also want you to make it to where you can choose from these elements: fire, wind, water, ice, blight, poison, acid, lightning, and life steal. Also add more weapons like battle axe, javlein, falchion, bow, (metal bows) , great sword, shield (metal too) war axe, zweihander, etc, etc. We hate devs if they are not reading this and not put this in game. Also make the diamond look less like tin. That is how we get cheap swords and it is annoying because sometimes we also pass up diamond because it looks like tin. Our suggestion: make it a really really light blue.
Its a really fun game the only thing we would change would be the graphics if it was 3D you had to cut things you could do other things and maybe some things cheaper it would totally be a five star game theres not a lot of ads and it really overall nice.
This game is, for the most part, well done. The gameplay is simple but surprisingly engaging, the customization is interesting for the most part, and its not something you need to spend hours upon hours of time to get good at, although you certainly could spend quite a bit of time playing. The gameplay lends itself to a sort of rhythm when making swords, and we think the simplicity of the game lends to this. However, we still cant give it five stars for three particular reasons, and in order of largest reason to the smallest, those are: 1) the mining step 2) the customization 3) ad amount The mining step is, to say the least, somewhat infuriating. There have been numerous times where we want to make a specific combination of ores in order to create a possibly cool-looking sword, only to have said sword ruined by three pieces of copper and a piece of tin. If there were a way to discard ores you didnt want to use during the mining step but decrease the spawn rates of rarer ores, that would turn this game into an incredible time sink that we personally know we could spend more time than is likely healthy on. Another issue is the similarity of all the grey ores. The minute differences in shade make them nigh impossible to tell apart, and half the time we end up with tin in a sword when we thought it was aluminum or silver. Differentiating those would make this a lot better. These next two will be shorter, we swear. The customization, while we did praise it, still does leave something to be desired. There doesnt feel like a large variety of theoretical combinations. To see more unique-looking blades and hilts would make this just that much more fun. An ad gets played every time you finish a sword, and we feel like maybe that might be a little too much for some people, ourselves included. We understand that youre getting revenue from them, but you also have other games where you can pull revenue from, and we doubt that changing the program so an ad plays after every two swords will show that much difference in income. People will still pay for no ads, so the amount is, to an extent, somewhat irrelevant. All in all, great game, but needs some quality of life improvements.
Love the game needs a second sword rack that maybe doesnt make money but allows you to keep swords you like that may be less valuable.
We like this game and we wven disabled the adds for it. But the ore you fet is so dang random you never progress past uncommon and maybe rare.
Contains about 5 hours gameplay. Dont spend any money! Spent $5 to cut out the ads and we still have ads! We beat the game, maxed everything, made the best swords. Ui is horrible but the concept was cool. No updates for content so im uninstalling.
Its a great game but it doesnt have enough ores and its to hard to get good ones like we have play this game for a year and never gotten a rare sword.
This game is sort of accurate to real life forging but it is mostly about casting using Liquid Metal please make this game more accurate to real life forging.
It really is a good game. Minus the AD that runs immediately after make a sword and every sword after there is an AD. But we will say that we usually uninstall a game like that immediately, this however we made like 20 swords/ watched 20 ads before uninstalling. Sooo.
Cool concept just needs some switch up in play.
When we first saw this game it looked really cool and pretty fun and it is but eventually like 20 mins in we got ads left and right they kept coming so if your reading this make sure you know you will get ads left and right.
That game was good just our money counter broke and is glitched.
We enjoy this game as a great time waster, we even paid to go ad free which we rarely do, usually we just delete a game once the ads get annoying but we liked playing this and seeing what kinda of swords we could make but thats also where the biggest and possibly only major flaw comes into play. We currently have everything but shine speed, sword price and sword capacity maxed out, shine speed is at +80% and the price is ridiculous now for something rather pointless. The major problem though is when it comes to collecting ore, there we absolutely no way to filter it, we need something like that, maybe an option to try and break the junk ore before it rolls down or a way to break open the rocks then pick the ore we want and six are the other ore because at this point in the game we would feel pretty nice to craft something other then common quality swords for once.
We have to say, this is one of the best games Ive seen in quite awhile. However, there is this one bug that makes it so that on level 70, you cant complete it. You just cant. The sword just doesnt forge.
This game is pretty fun but you receive an ad after every single sword and you have to play an unskippable ad after every two upgrades to continue upgrading your forge.
Its not very good, its very buggy, it looks like the developers took little to no time on it, and its basifally a cash grab,.
We love this game but there are too many adds and im not paying to get rid of ads.
It wont let us accept the first quest.
Theres been a bug for the free version that prevents you from doing or obtaining anything thatd require you to watch an ad. Been hoping for a fix cuz this wasnt a bad time waster, but after almost 2 years of bug fixes that never fixed this issue. Im going to one star review it, delete it after having played it for 4-5 years and hope for Lion Studios and everyone connecteds bankruptcy.
We need a mechanic where we can dispose of unwanted ores! We are sick of this it is so stupid you guys dont have that yet the game developers need to get to work on this.
More effort was put into the thumbnail, and the amount of ads is eye-watering. After every sword you make, you get an ad. Oh, youre trying to buy upgrades? Ad. If the game can give you an ad, it will. This game is a cash grab.
Concept of the game is great but due to buying the upgrade that made it to where we should have no and and we still have ads is horrible. Id give better a rating if they actually followed through with their buyers agreement and we no longer received ads but because that isnt happening its not worth getting.
Great fun game to play when you have a few minutes if free time and want a chill game.
Can you please update this game because we want it to have more materials and more blades two so can you do that please.
GG every body thinks that the ads are bad just tern of airplane mode and it's amazing.
We would like it if you could ours metals before hand and then use the metal that you mined before hand.
Great time killing game, fun for those that like collecting. Trying to make a rare+ sword with each of the different customizations has been our goal. Its fun and addictive. Truly an awesome game. As most have already stated, making a feature with the mineral table where odds are increased would be a great add on. Maybe more etchings for the swords too or even a different dummy to cut apart would be cool too. Dont want to ask for too much so we wont. But if the devs ever see this, please keep it in mind! 5 star game imo.
This app has the most amazing features and we love it and other people will to if we keep playing this game now lets keep forging.
Its good that there are a lot of different metals but there needs to be more types of blades, handles, and engravings like maybe a mace, or a dagger for the blades, you could even add famous patters like leopard skin. Either way, good game needs more content.
First off, this is an amazing game and it is very satisfying. Im sad at the fact that we cant hear the design or shining noises though. Second off, whats up with all the ads? Its like a 2:3 ad to actual game time ratio. And third off, this is what REALLY ticked us off. We were making another sword, since we had an open slot. It was a REALLY good one with like 42% platinum. But then, oh but then, it only showed the scrap button. Now whats up with that? Otherwise, this is a great and addictive game. But still, p l e a s e fix the scrap problem. It would make our game time a lot better. PS Cake is very sad now.
When we try to hammer our sword it doesnt work in one spot , it might not work because the sword we are making which is the jagged sword but this is a great game however we do think that you should be able to freely ours ore with a storage system that starts at 10 and upgradeable until level 25 , and you should make another part where instead of hammering it to align the sword aaand cool the sword down so we think you should add a barrel of water that cools the sword down , but this is a great game and this is the only bug that Ive seen and we do think that the last person that wrote a review is correct we think you should add refinement.
Its a great game and for once a mobile game does not have too many ads but there is a couple of things we wish was in the game like custom handles and daggers.
Overall its pretty relaxing and we like it. Our major issues with it is you need to watch videos to upgrade your stuff past a certain point. You can not skip it or choose to just pay with gold. You HAVE to watch the video to upgrade which is extremely annoying especially because ads already happen frequently. Also metals like Tin silver and aluminum are almost completely indistinguishable from eachother. We also wish there were more quests. Besides that its a sold 8/10.
We started playing and it was fun but then nothing no progress just do the same thing over and over again no progress you same thing you make a sword chop something down then you do it all over again so if you want to do one thing repeatedly download this game but if you dont want to do something repeatedly dont download this game because we download this game we thought you would cut down things make swords but then we realized Im just doing one thing over and over again so then we deleted the game andAnd you should too you.
Decent game to pass the time, but after every sword they push you you an ad immediately. To make it worse they started pushing unskippable ads. Wont let us skip an ad we didnt request? Well you get deleted immediately.
Ads for days. Money grab game ads even cover the bottom where the upgrades are so you cant even see what youre doing smfh.
Were are the updated we have no idea what the game is doing because it does not have any other ore in it so you have to fix it or you can not get the game back up at the place that is now so you have 1 day to get it fixed and not lose people.
We love this game Im like level 80 in 2 days but the only problem we have is there is too much copper and tin spawning. Other than that this game is five stars in our opinion.
Im a real black smith and this is the exact way you make swords.
Its all right we like playing it when Im bored, Im a extremely high lvl in the game. Not much to do but we like it. PLEASE UPDATE IT. Make it to where you can get better weapons. ALSO PLEASE ADD MORE METALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE UPDATE. We want more swords and more weapon variants in general. We love this game. Stop with the bug fixes and add some content – a day one player who wants more content.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 0.96
- Size: 254.45 MB
- iOS: 10.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, JA, KO, ZH, ES, ZH
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor, Infrequent/Mild Medical/Treatment Information, Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Lion Studios LLC
Last updated: 26th July 2022 | Genre: Casual, Simulation | Developer: Lion Studios LLC