(This review is based on 3 full playthroughs of the campaign with all 7 Liberation Rites completed. The first 2 occurred back in 2022 before Steam Deck launch. The third one took place on a Deck in June, 2024.)
By May, 2024, indie studio Supergiant Games had released 5 games. Pyre, their third game, can be seen as a middle point. One rather stands out, I might add. With Dareen Corb’s music, Jen Zee’s striking 2D art and Logan Cunningham’s voice over narration, Pyre looks undoubtedly “From the creators of Bastin, Transistor and Hades”. Yet the game certainly contains something the studio had not done before it and has yet to repeat.
As I kept failing to banish the third biome boss in Hade 2’s early access release, Pyre seems like a nice detour to take. I intend to see what did it inherit from Bastion and Transistor, what did it kept only to itself and what did it give to the Hades games.
What it got from its predecessors
In Pyre, the player assumes the role of Reader, a nameless and voiceless character with only an easy-to-miss pronoun selection (He/Him, she/her or they/them). Reader is more of point-of-view character than player avatar. In the Downside, a team of Exiles called Nightwing found Reader and they got more chances at the Rites. Through the Rites, the Exiles have a shot to go back to the Commonwealth that sentenced them down here. At the meantime, a revolution making use of ancient myth is going.
Like Bastion and Transistor, Pyer is ultimately about surviving the end of a world. Unlike those 2 though, “the end of a world” here does not mean that word in ruin and most of the population dead or gone, but rather that the bridge between 2 worlds would be gone soon. So, people have to think real hard about which part they would rather reside in.
The aforementioned Mr. Cunningham returned to voice a character only known as well, Voice. This is a voice-over narrator very hostile to players of this game and Cunningham did a similar voice for Hades 2’s final boss. Ms. Zee’s art is beautiful as ever, Mr. Corb’s music render everything well. Greg Kasavin’s script is on point here, as in as it won’t make one fall in love with that style but I, who like his previous work, dig its humor, drama and personality.
What it kept for itself
Being a new take of the classic Pong, Pyre is not isometric like the rest of Supergiant’s output. The journey in the Downside bit feels closer to side scrolling with visual novel segments peppered in while the Rites, which can be played as a local multiplayer game, take place in symmetric arenas. To encourage teamplay, the stamina bar of each Exile feels more limiting than any other Supergiant title. The Rite is a mixture of basketball and combat sport. It’s like basketball for there are 2 ways to score. One called Douse as the Orb-holding Exile dive into the opposite team’s Pyre, the other called Fling as one merely throws the Orb in.
The Rite’s combat sport like features are as such. For starters, to end a Rite is not to score more within some time limits but to extinguish the other side’s Pyre at the 2 sides’ leisure. The 3 on 3 teamplay also involve Banishment, as the players not carrying Orb can banish by either standing still and letting players from the other team getting into their Aura or shooting that Aura out. Banishment is on a timer, and Douse would banish the scoring Exile until someone else score.
New Game Plus is featured in both Bastion and Transistor, and you can argue that Hades games’ rouge-lite mechanic makes every run after the first a NG+ playthrough. But Pyre does not have NG+ unless you count the part after Liberation Rite as such. Well, the lack of NG+ does mean that there is un-skippable tutorial every time you start a campaign.
The campaign contains 7 Liberation Rites like finals in a ballgame season where Reader has to choose a more valued player to send up. The road to the first one is the longest, introducing mechanics, adversaries, a raster of six to mix and max plus 2 gameplay segments bit different from the Rites. After that, things got bit more random as one chooses between 2 or among 3 adversaries to tackle at one time. A couple of (3 or 2 depends on how deep into campaign Reader is. The game progress has more of a winding down vibe.) such Rites later, another Liberation Rites commences. The story goes on whether the Rites are won or lost. Personally, I think the game discourages retry by making it a menu option only abled during Rites while once the score is settled, the game would auto-save.
It's sad to see how much of “an ignored step child” Pyre is within Supergiant’s library. Poor thing never got a port beyond its summer 2017 release on PS4 and Steam. Even on Steam, it had become an afterthought. During Steam Deck’s launch window, Valve had showed games being Verified, Playable or otherwise on their handheld through store page accessible to all ways of browsing. Hades was Verified when Pyre was still Unknown. I mean the 2020 action rogue-lite was GOTY that year for IGN, Giantbomb and yours truly, but come on! Age before beauty.
I guess it’s truly a sign of the game not being a commercial success with Supergiant taking up a deal with Epic for Hades’ earliest access. The action rogue-lite’s sequel became the most played game on Steam Deck in May, 2024. Surely, even with Valve taking a larger cut, it brought more revenue for the developer. Guess characters talking fantasy gibberish for the most of part does hurt a game’s chances.
What it gave to its successors
Compared to Bastion and Transistor, Pyre did expand Supergiant’s narrative ambition with its visual novel segments. One campaign run of Pyre takes me about 8 hours while those first 2 games took six. The modular structure does provide incentive even with the lack of NG+. After tip-toing around Greek Mythology with their 3 games, it’s actually not too surprising to see Supergiant taking a nose-dive into the realm of those ancient tales. Pyre merely took losing ball games into account while Hades games are about feeling like an immortal with bucket load more writing and a smarter way to distribute.
Pyre overall is an experiment with mixed result. It got some nice new twist added to the arcade sport formula with root reaching back to Pong. Its characters are charming to those who are willing to embrace certain style of writing. Its story about myth making is not for everyone and the fantasy vocal gibberish does make the delivery less effective. If you are a Supergiant loyalist like yours truly, there is no hurt in seeing it through as part of their complete library. If not, well, it’s all a coin toss. Maybe read bit more of it and decide for yourself.