Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP has been receiving a lot of praise all over the web recently, there are those who are calling it a shining example of games as art...
...what did i think?
...read on dear reader... read on
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is a game that almost defies description, at heart it's an old school adventure game complete with the aforementioned swords, sorcery (or sworcery) and most anything else you associate with high fantasy, but what sets it apart from other games in the genre is the atmosphere it manages to create. A combination of a brilliantly self-aware and witty script, beautiful pixel art and a totally awesome soundtrack by Jim Guthrie served to draw me in far more than many big budget console releases.
GRAPHICS
The art style is one of the first things you'll notice, the pixel art style is very 'in' at the moment and despite what you may think of it you can't deny that this is fantastic work. While the games doesn't use the most vibrant pallet in the world, the locations are filled with such detail that they're a joy to look at. While some of you may be turned off by the retro visuals those of use who remember back to when pixels were king will get a kick out of this, i guarantee.
GAMEPLAY
The game isn't perfect, but then what game is. I played it on the iphone and there were a few occasions when tapping on the little tiny whatever it was i was supposed to be tapping wasn't quite as easy as it could have been (although this wouldn't be a problem in the ipads larger screen) and the designers seem to have made a conscious decision to give the player as little help as possible, this is fine for most of the game where the lack of instruction actually helped the atmosphere, giving you the sense that you were discovering this strange new world without the hand-holding that we've become accustomed to in modern games, but there were a few occasions where a few puzzles left me stumped with no alternative than to stop being such a damn wussy and figure it out for myself.
Sword & Sworcery isn't a fast paced game, sure there is some combat, but you'll spend most of your time walking about examining objects and solving puzzles, as such it's perfectly playable using the touch screen.
As with any game designed in this age of social networking it contains twitter functionality, your free to tweet your accomplishments, and, once you gain the megatome (a magical book capable of reading people's thoughts) any of the characters highly amusing inner monologues.
SOUND
The sound in Sword & Sworcery EP is yet another point where the game shines. It's not your run-of-the-mill generic fantasy rubbish and thus serves to perfectly compliment the off beat humour and sweet pixel art, really rounding off the package.
Are games art?
No… they're games… but then Sword and Sworcery isn't a game, or at least doesn't feel like one in the traditional sense, it's more of an experience… and one that's worth taking at that.