Quick Look: Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP

@mnzy said:

@CornBREDX said:

I've been playing this since saturday I think, the sounds and music in this game are neat, but the dialogue at times is really cringe worthy.

See, what Patrick doesn't fully explain in this is you can examine a lot of stuff and so there is more text dialogue, but it often evokes a very "internet slang" feel. It really takes you out of it if your like me. I think the game is creative, but the dialogue is so awful. I realize it's trying to be cute (and the meta nature is kinda cool) but they could've gone a different route with it so its not so in your face.

Mechanically the game is sound, and I didn't know when I got it but ya it feels like a touch screen game. This doesn't hamper the game to much, I enjoy some of the design decisions- not so much the dialogue- and the music and sound is pretty fantastic.

Next time, though, if they want me to get one of their games again I'm gonna have to ask they leave out the childish lingo. It's not helping the story for me, or maybe I'm just getting old I don't know haha

I cant reiterate enough, though, the music is fantastic.

100% agree, the writing is really terrible. It doesn't fit the world, it's not funny and they wasted the great opportunity for more depth and atmosphere. It's was only about 4€ on Steam and it came with the soundtrack (which is pretty good), so I can't complain. But I think people hyped this game way too much.

I really disagree. The "meta" nature of the writing is infused with the entirety of the story and world. There are all kinds of oddities, anachronisms, and just wholly bizarre scenarios that all make an effort to create a world seems a bit confusing and unhinged. You may have wanted a more traditional story, and that probably would have worked well quite well, but that wasn't the game the creators wanted to make.

If it didn't connect with you, that's cool, but I really don't think that makes the writing "awful" or "terrible." You just didn't like the story they were trying to tell.

@Sweetz said:

Patrick's hipster status confirmed. Are his black fame glasses and suspenders on order? ;)

Yeah, I can't stand the dialog and general tone. "We had bridged the chasm & we felt super smart." Ugh. At what point does it say, "Let me show you how self-aware of being a video game I am; me & my creators are super awesome because of it"?

Well, at least you gave it a chance before jumping to the conclusion that there couldn't possibly be something deeper than that going on.

Don't really wanna play this game but I do want the soundtrack..

Way to many pixel art games these days.

I can understand how someone could not like this game but as a graphic designer I have to say it is beautiful. The artstyle, the UI, the typography work, and the overall composition is great. Can´t wait to get this on Steam.

Meh, any game by Amanita Design is probably better than this. Check out the Humble Indie Bundle if you don't believe me.

I've never payed much attention to mobile games, but this one looks alright. I just bought a new iPad last week.. been meaning to try some games on it. I'm going to check it out.

@BrockNRolla said:

@Sweetz said:

Patrick's hipster status confirmed. Are his black fame glasses and suspenders on order? ;)

Yeah, I can't stand the dialog and general tone. "We had bridged the chasm & we felt super smart." Ugh. At what point does it say, "Let me show you how self-aware of being a video game I am; me & my creators are super awesome because of it"?

Well, at least you gave it a chance before jumping to the conclusion that there couldn't possibly be something deeper than that going on.

Sarcasm? From a (possible) hipster. Well, color me shocked . . . irony.

I heard you were into jarring colloquial dialog in fantasy settings before it was cool & you're super smart because of it. :p

Haven't watched the video, but prediction: it's Patrick saying the words "ostensibly" and "scenario" a lot.

I haven't looked at the QL yet, but I am enjoying this game. it gets me away from Mass effect 3 and is a sound alternative to Painkiller recocurring Evil for mental stimulation. It looked different, i recognized the vibe, and Fex and Grimlock are down the road.

I may have to get this game on the Iphone, the music is phenomenal!

I really like the art direction and sound here, but the self referential dialogue breaks the immersion a lot.

Are the load times really this long?

@deerokus said:

@nickux said:

Sometimes I feel like the only person who bought this the day it came out on iOS, played it for a few hours, and just did not have very much fun. The style is amazing, no doubt about it, but playing it just didn't click with me.

You're not, I think some of the games media (especially the poseur-ish types like Patrick and Kieron Gillen who love an indie game with high thematic ideas) love it, but as you can see from the comments on here, many normal gamers don't like it very much.

I've been baffled by Patrick's overselling of it ever since it inexplicably showed up in his GOTY suggestions.

I played it and thought it was ok. The way your character moves painfully slow even when "sprinting" and the fact that there are often many screen to traverse between objectives made the gameplay become tiresome for me. Also theres something to be said for the fact that I just can't watch the quicklook as I don't think I've ever been less interested. It's weird really because I watch QL's for the banter more than the actual gameplay but just can't watching it. Having Patrick use his favorite terms of "it's not afraid to be aware of itself" or any iteration of that also is a little meh but whatever. Maybe if Vinny played it...Vinny can do no wrong..

Reminded me to buy this on my iPhone. Can't believe I forgot all about this.

@Sweetz said:

@BrockNRolla said:

@Sweetz said:

Patrick's hipster status confirmed. Are his black fame glasses and suspenders on order? ;)

Yeah, I can't stand the dialog and general tone. "We had bridged the chasm & we felt super smart." Ugh. At what point does it say, "Let me show you how self-aware of being a video game I am; me & my creators are super awesome because of it"?

Well, at least you gave it a chance before jumping to the conclusion that there couldn't possibly be something deeper than that going on.

Sarcasm? From a (possible) hipster. Well, color me shocked . . . irony.

I heard you were into jarring colloquial dialog in fantasy settings before it was cool & you're super smart because of it. :p

Funny. Ragging on hipsters instead of engaging with the topic = an unassailable defense for your conclusions.

Yeah, I hate all the dialog in this game (or I guess it's mostly narration). It's the same joke over and over.

Always thought this game was massively overrated when it was on iOS.
 
Still think it is.

@Sweetz: That's stupid and you're stupid.

I have this game for ios, but is not much of a "game", it's more an OST experience

Art is great and music is great, but nothing about the gameplay looks interested at all. I can't get excited about the game because of that.

I bought this on ios and regret it. Was cool looking but incredibly boring.

Self aware 4th wall bullshit was the last straw for me. The woooorrrrrsssssst

"I don't necessarily know what this game is, but I have to play it" - Brad

Spoilers: He wont play it.

More trash. The problem with a lot of these little titles that they are a very good art style but completely fail as a game. This is a prime example. This game is garbage.

That was a lot of walking.

Kinda tired of games getting a pass simply because they have a great art style and soundtrack, but okay gameplay. Looks alright, but probably not for me.

@Detrian said:

Always thought this game was massively overrated when it was on iOS. Still think it is.

Good for you.

Oh jeez well Now I gotta go finish this on my iPhone

@Phatmac said:

@Detrian said:

Always thought this game was massively overrated when it was on iOS. Still think it is.

Good for you.

Unnecessary snark for a valid opinion. And I personally enjoyed finishing it over the last two weeks.

Dude. You missed the best part of this game if you haven't heard Logfella talk. I mean, who ISN'T into bloodsports?

@BrockNRolla said:

@Sweetz said:

@BrockNRolla said:

@Sweetz said:

Patrick's hipster status confirmed. Are his black fame glasses and suspenders on order? ;)

Yeah, I can't stand the dialog and general tone. "We had bridged the chasm & we felt super smart." Ugh. At what point does it say, "Let me show you how self-aware of being a video game I am; me & my creators are super awesome because of it"?

Well, at least you gave it a chance before jumping to the conclusion that there couldn't possibly be something deeper than that going on.

Sarcasm? From a (possible) hipster. Well, color me shocked . . . irony.

I heard you were into jarring colloquial dialog in fantasy settings before it was cool & you're super smart because of it. :p

Funny. Ragging on hipsters instead of engaging with the topic = an unassailable defense for your conclusions.

It wasn't intended as a defense of my conclusion, which was: I don't like the dialog. Don't really need to "defend" that and I really don't give a fig if other people agree with me. You seem fairly concerned about it though.

@Phatmac said:

Kinda tired of games getting a pass simply because they have a great art style and soundtrack, but okay gameplay. Looks alright, but probably not for me.

Good for you.

Anything besides deer that have antlers are bad news.

I award myself 100 space points for guessing that Patrick would be involved with this quicklook.

Anyone else think the "pixel art" thing is playing itself out?
 
So many games use it, and now it is just like "hey lets use pixel art.  People seem to like that now."
 
Make your own style like Limbo or Shank.  Don't just use pixel art because its the cool thing to do.

I hate that "8 bitty" has automatically become "great artstyle"

Doesn't look like there are any benefits with playing it with a mouse. Kinda weird that you still have to click the sword and shield buttons with the mouse instead of just mapping that to the mouse buttons.

The pixel art looks great though, but I wonder why they don't use any kind of pixel filters for the particle effects, the smooth smoke and shadow things just look weird in contrast to the pixel art. Probably some deliberate decision behind that, but I don't agree with that decision, unless they maybe do something more with it later in the game (smooth monster things in a pixel world, making them seem more otherworldly? still doesn't explain why the smoke from the house was also smooth though).

The music sounds awesome. I'll probably grab this for my shiny new iPad.

does that "we got the megatome we are the smartest" have some kind of relevance outside of the game for patrick to be so excited about it? I remember when this game came out on iOS originally twitter was a nightmare of messages from this game.

Hmm...this QL has convinced me to go ahead and buy S&S EP Micro for the iPhone (since I don't have an iPad) looks like a solid game, and Patrick's advice has been heeded to iOS it is!

@Cataphract1014 said:

Anyone else think the "pixel art" thing is playing itself out? So many games use it, and now it is just like "hey lets use pixel art. People seem to like that now." Make your own style like Limbo or Shank. Don't just use pixel art because its the cool thing to do.

@Stubee said:

I hate that "8 bitty" has automatically become "great artstyle"

There's room for making great pixel art, and I have no problem with games doing it. Both Sword & Sworcery and Fez seem to do it really well (though I do have some problems with what I've seen so far of S&S), and a lot of games do it horribly (the BLLSL or Happy Hour where they explored the depths of Xbox Live's indie section provided lots of the latter). You take Limbo and Shank as examples of games that have their own art styles, which I don't quite agree with, they just emulate art styles from other mediums (Limbo by 20's and 30's expressionism, and Shank by flat colored comic books), while pixel graphics is generally a game medium specific art style (while of course similar art exist in mosaic). I don't understand why there would be a problem with games using an art style that has a history in the medium rather than emulating art from other media, but sure, there's probably a lot of unexplored potential in digital art too. As long as there is an internal consistency to the art (or if they break the form/introduce elements from other styles deliberately rather than by incompetence, like many examples on XBLA Indie) I love pixel art.

I've had this game on my iPhone for like four months and never played it. After watching this, I'm totally jumping in after work tonight. Looks fantastic.

@Cataphract1014 said:

Anyone else think the "pixel art" thing is playing itself out? So many games use it, and now it is just like "hey lets use pixel art. People seem to like that now." Make your own style like Limbo or Shank. Don't just use pixel art because its the cool thing to do.

As if Limbo and Shank just materialized out of thin air and are completely original in their style.

Also, pixel art isn't a style in itself; that's like saying 2D line art is a style. Or to rephrase, what Sword & Sorcery is doing with pixels is clearly distinct from what Fez is doing, what the Beat.Trip games are doing, &c. Or look at what something like Gemini Rue is doing--it's 2D, it's pixels, but it looks nothing like this game.

I played about the first ten minutes of the game and could not stand the dialogue style.

meh

Don't see the appeal of the game and the tweet stuff is not welcome.

Great style. I think it would lend itself well to a nice long RPG. I would like that very much.

@jmood88 said:

I award myself 100 space points for guessing that Patrick would be involved with this quicklook.

If it's a game that's on or came from iOS or is a PS3 exclusive, it's pretty much guaranteed he'd be in on it since those are the two gaming platforms he seems to focus on.

Shame this won't come out on Android devices, especially since I just bought an android tablet.

Also, Patrick, have you played DotA 2?