Superbrothers: Sword And Sworcery
(28/05/2011) The creators of s:s&s ep (abbreviating the title makes it no less hard to type, it seems) cite the work of Eric Chahi, Shigeru Miyomoto and Fumito Ueda as inspiration for their iOS audiovisual experiment. Grand inspirations, and the game wears its inspirations on its sleeve. The visual style recalls the opening moments of Another World. The story riffs off the mythology of Zelda. It’s sparse beauty recalls the plains of Shadow of the Colossus. Yet far from being derivative of these titles, Sworcery creates its own identity and stands out as a completely unique experience.
Sound is the game’s greatest caveat. Sound design is usually considered adept when it fits a game’s visual tone. Sworcery’s sound sets the tone of the whole experience. The soundtrack is not so much an accompaniment to the game as the game seems to flow organically from its soundtrack. This is not a ‘music game’ in the traditional sense, but its music is its central component. If you’re not playing it with headphones on, you’re playing it wrong.
The sound and the visuals play off each other in many wonderful ways, creating an atmosphere that feels impossibly dense for such a small-scale game. Other quirks enhance the game’s distinctive voice. The real-world lunar cycle is used and manipulated in surprising ways. The game constantly comments on itself with a clever meta-narrative, rife with pop-culture slang and social networking references. The result is a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously; it avoids the pitfall of extensive naval-gazing that often plagues similar ‘art games’, and establishes a unique vibe quite unlike anything else I’ve experienced.
Mechanically, the game is flawed in places. The imagination that can be so captivating falls flat in few of the puzzles; while some make inspired use of touch-sensitivity, others involve so little logic that the only way to progress is to poke at the screen until the right number of things light up.
The game also makes you re-tread many of its environments (slowly) multiple times, and repeat-performances of certain battle in its second half can wear on the patience, especially for those at a loss for what to do next. There are rare times, when you are walking down a mountain for the fourth time or watching the same enemy respawn for the sixth, that the game’s charm runs the risk of wearing thin.
But to find such niggles truly frustrating is to miss the point of the experience. The creators describe the game as 'a brave experiment in Input Output Cinema'. Grandiose, perhaps, but after playing, you can see where they are coming from. As a videogame in the purely mechanical sense, Sworcery is simple, shallow and sometimes derivative. But the lasting impression is one that leaves a much greater impact than many full-price AAA games.
Sworcery is a finely crafted experience that is acutely aware of the technology it is designed for. It is a definitive statement that the size of a game has no necessary correlation with its capacity to enthral. Many iOS developers struggle to overcome the technical limitations of the platform. Those who understand it better make Angry Birds or Tiny Wings. With Sworcery, Capybara Games have shown that a casual game does not have to be a throwaway one. Sworcery is built around the technology of the iPhone and iPad to such an extent that it simply wouldn’t work on other platforms.
It is a shame that the game is not available on other mobile platforms like Android or Windows Phone 7, as it deserves to be experienced by as many people as possible, but it’s easy to see why Apple wanted to keep it exclusive to their platform. It’s a coming of age for smart-phone gaming, a game with real impact that takes elements of those great games that are its inspiration and injects a sense of identity and personality to create a wonderfully unique, surprising and engaging experience.
