Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is a 2011 indie adventure game released on iOS, Android, PC, Mac and Linux which well worth the time of any gamer.
If there’s one thing that S&S gets right, it’s atmosphere. The game has some of the most gorgeous pixel art I’ve ever seen in a game, and the score by Jim Guthrie complements the environment perfectly. The two blend together to create a curated tone for every part of the game, and it’s incredibly effective.
The characters and story are extremely archetypal by design. In fact, there is a character called the Archetype, who “hosts” the game which he describes as a psychology experiment. At times he enters into the game itself to interact with the characters as well. He has an interesting design and a phenomenal theme song, but this never really goes anywhere. The story was clearly a secondary concern for the developers, so don’t expect any plot twists or deeper meaning behind the game.
One thing I didn’t particularly care for was the use of modern slang in the dialogue, similar to Adventure Time. While it works well on AT, here I think it detracts from the overall tone. There’s also a button that accompanies every line of text in the game prompting you to retweet it. It’s perfectly easy to ignore, but still makes me weep a bit for humanity.
The puzzles are nothing complex or ground-breaking, but are still really enjoyable. Most of them involve interacting with the environment in some way (such as clicking the trees from thinnest to widest). They’re simple, but have a relaxing quality to them that contribute to the game’s overall aesthetic. Most of the puzzles don’t carry any instruction, and I had to brute force a couple without really understanding what I did, but overall, they work really well.
There are only two areas where S&S really suffers: movement and combat. The movement speed is really slow and places of interest are really spread out. It’s nice to take in the environment at first, but you end up backtracking through the same environments a lot and there isn’t any sort of quick travel. Too much of the game is spent waiting for your character to slowly march from one side of the screen to the other with absolutely nothing to do.
The combat is really simplified. There are two buttons (block and attack) and battle consists of watching the enemy’s tells and blocking or attacking when appropriate.
The simple combat isn’t a problem in and of itself, but you fight the same enemies multiple times without any change in tactics or difficulty. The three Trigon fights are the worst. They’re all basically identical and contain long, unskippable animations between attacks. Don’t get me wrong, they’re nice animations, but the repetition gets boring, especially if you need a couple tries to take them out.
Overall, the strengths of Sword & Sworcery EP far outweigh its weaknesses. If you have any interest in games as art, this is one you can’t ignore.
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