Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP

[Trog]

http://www.ifc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/sword-and-sworcery-ep.jpg

Platform: iOS, Mac, PC
Available on: App Store, Steam

I don't know if anyone else on the forums has played and posted about this little adventure game yet but I just finished it and I have to say that overall I loved the game. :smallsmile: It had great atmosphere, an old school visual style which I enjoyed, a very iconic story and a good bit of humor. Also, good music. Musical Sample Linky (http://youtu.be/wOOqdRsbHKA)

It's not the most complex combat system ever but being a fellow who cut his teeth on Punch-Out! and the like, I found it entertaining enough for its overall simplicity. Most of the game, actually, is about puzzles involving music and the environment rather than combat. This was a bit confusing at first but it was fun to master by the end of it.

The game isn't very long and thankfully not too expensive but it's worth a play, I think, for those who like adventure/puzzler sort of games. I very much enjoyed guiding the Scythian through her woeful errand. Especially when it involved moving through environments like this: :smallbiggrin:

http://bulk.destructoid.com/ul/197381-/sworcery_1-620x.jpg

Also, for those who like this sort of thing here is a link to a tumblr blog with all sorts of fan art. Linky. (http://sworcery.tumblr.com/) I find the various interpretations of the Scythian's garb to be especially interesting.

My thoughts for those who have finished the game (WARNING: Spoilers):

I found it interesting that the designers chose to have the Scythian die off at the end of the adventure. Oddly, I didn't even notice the reducing health throughout the game until near the very end. But it had an interesting story of sacrifice in order to secure the peaceful lives of Girl and Logfella and such. I think they did a good job of foreshadowing this ending and all but, still... part of me wanted to see the Scythian recover I suppose. v.v

Pretty sure most of the reasoning behind that decision was probably aligned with one of the creator's thoughts on gaming and trying to, perhaps, work against the grain there and cast the idea of struggling against evil forces to be a battle that ultimately takes its toll on the hero(ine) and that sometimes, in that struggle, the ultimate price must be payed to win. Hour long game design lecture linky for the interested. (http://youtu.be/K0kup_anLeU)

Not sure how I felt about the lolcasual style tweet-length texts. Part of me wishes they had tried to remain serious about it or at least in keeping with the bronze age time period of the setting. But then again this is from a guy who made a troglodyte run tavern complete with all sorts of oddball things mish-mashed together so... yeah. Not really one to talk in that regard I suppose. :smalltongue:

Anyway, I really want to see the Scythian return (prequel perhaps?) and the other characters too, actually. If anyone ever hears of one in the works drop me a PM. :smallsmile:

*runs off to dance in the moonlight with the grizzled boor*

[Mx.Silver]

I got this game as part of one of the Humble Bundles a while back. I never really got around to finishing it, which might be surprising considering it's a short game. But to be honest I have no real desire to go back to it.
As you said, the actual gameplay isn't particularly impressive, and it gets downright annoying at times, given that how insufferably long the trigon fights are, and how much of that time is spent just sitting there waiting for them to start their attack patterns. If you do lose a fight near the end then you're going to have to sit through it all over again.

I could forgive that if there was something else to the game, but unfortunately there really isn't. The story is paper-thin and the only things with less depth are the characters. The scythean's - and therefore the player's - entire motivation basically boils down to 'for the lols' and she's about as fleshed-out as the cast get. The dialogue is completely anachronistic and so much of it is given over to further smothering the game in self-aware irony ("The girl is called Girl, and you can tweet everything she says on Twitter as a mechanic. Isn't this just so meta, you guys?!") that you never get any sense of them as characters nor any reason to give a damn.
The game just seems so convinced of it's own significance and subversiveness (when you first open the game you're given a speech by The Architect about how it's an 'Experiment' and you get kicked back to the main menu to 'let things settle in' after every major accomplishment) that it seems to have lost sight of actually putting any real substance to it, beyond the aforementioned over-saturation of self-aware irony that really just makes it harder to connect with.
It has a nice aesthetic and the sound-work and music are decent but really that's not enough to carry it and that's pretty much all it has going for it.

[Trog]

It sure could use some game mechanic improvements, I'll give you that. The trigon fights have that long pause at the beginning in order to allow you to heal back up if you had failed at the beginning, I discovered. But given that you can do so back to full no matter what, it seems... pointless. In that respect the game is TOO tied to the musical score underlying it. Now if they had incorporated a healing thing that could be done inside of the combat instead it might be more challenging/practical/...something.

It is a bit "hit you over the head" with how "different" they are deliberately trying to be in some areas and I'm not sure I care for that so much. I especially don't like the fat cat narrator guy and could have done without him. I definitely couldn't give a crap about tweeting anything from any game ever, myself. But I guess the whole game seemed to not really take itself seriously so I didn't either. *shrug* But I'm a sucker for a sword wielding hero in a forested land figuring out puzzles and having the occasional fight so… yeah. I enjoyed that basic setup.

Improve the game mechanics and lose some of the modern connections and I think it could make a good basis for a series of games. Especially if you had to fight AND solve the puzzles at the same time, holding off the enemy while you worked out a way to unlock some slumbering magic and such. Otherwise it would basically end up as a Zelda game. Which it was, in many ways, an obvious homage to.

Still, to me, it was worth the small price tag for what it was.