Quick Look: Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP

Im sure plenty of people said this but when you fight ganon in zelda you dont relfect his attacks with your shield. Its with your sword. More like baseball. Great qucik look though. I might get this for my ipad

@Pop said:

@AssInAss said:

@Quarters said:

I've yet to find one of this indie art darlings that I find interesting. They all are just total wet blankets for me. Not a huge fan of vague storytelling.

Not even But That Was [Yesterday]?

omg that game was amazing thanks for linking it dude!

No problem, glad you liked it :)

@fisk0 said:

I don't understand why there would be a problem with games using an art style

because nerds. as a veteran comment reader I can tell you that's the only answer you will find.

also this game looks really cool. will recommend it to a friend.

This is beautiful on the retina display for the new iPad, I do believe they put out and update just for that purpose.

I'm now going to plug in my oversized headphones and get lost in this game again!

Great game, good quick look, however: Patrick is really rushing thru everything without clicking on any of the interactable points in the environment, or talking to any of the other characters. Maybe he's just trying to not show all the content but it seems like he doesn't quite know everything about this game and is maybe feeding the viewers incorrect information about the game. There's quite a lot of voiced dialogue.

PS. that dialogue reveals that the main character is male, not female. The black pixels hanging from his head are a skullcap-type thing, not hair. It falls on the front as well. Correct me if I'm wrong?

@Lungford said:

PS. that dialogue reveals that the main character is male, not female. The black pixels hanging from his head are a skullcap-type thing, not hair. It falls on the front as well. Correct me if I'm wrong?

They refer to the Scythian (the main character) as a "she" many, many times in the narration/dialogue. The main character is female.

Tempted to buy this just for the art, sound, and soundtrack in this game. Looks great.

"This game was originally on iOS."

Oh, really? I couldn't tell. Pffft. Looks like they did nothing to this game to translate it to PCs.

Not buying. Well, not until they start selling touchscreen monitors.

Dammit, this quicklook is going to force me to buy this game. Everything I saw about this game before made me think it was pretentious indie shit, but I'll happily say that I was mistaken. Looks absolutely great.

I'll probably grab it on the ipad though, as that seems like the ideal place (and retina graphics!).

What a horrible, horrible looking game.

@BisonHero said:

I played Machinarium and enjoyed it thoroughly, while Sword & Sworcery didn't grab me in the same way. S&S's writing really brings the whole experience down; it needs to decide whether it wants to be beautiful and serene, or whether it wants to bash you over the head constantly with sarcastic narration and backhanded compliments.

Playing S&S is like going to the opera, and once you get there, there's a giant, blinking neon sign just above the pit that says "So I guess we're pretty fucking good at these instruments, aren't we?", and above the stage there's another giant, blinking neon sign that says "You don't even know the language they'll be singing in, but trust me, it's pretty well written." The sarcasm in S&S's writing feels like a crutch, in the same way that sarcam in real life is often a crutch. I know there are games that set out to be meta and break the fourth wall from the start, but this one does it badly, and in a way that makes you think they're doing it defensively so you can't accuse it of having a story of little meaning or originality. You can argue all day long that it enhances the game, but it did nothing but detract from it when I played it.

Also, I don't think the hipster label is reductive. People don't go around referring to just any intellectual game as a "hipster" game. Calling any other indie game a "hipster" game would be unfair to that game, but not so with S&S EP. Let's run down the checklist:

• considers itself an EP
• features a vinyl record as a prominent symbol of the game
• is constantly trying super hard to submit sarcastic and clever remarks about what is going on in front of them, instead of articulating anything sincere or genuine
• Twitter integration

If I had to pick one demographic that all of those things appeal to, it would be hipsters. And while I didn't include it in the checklist, it's arguable that you could consider the whole game "vintage", in the sense that for an iOS game, it is a pretty big throwback to old point-n-click adventure games and has some obvious nods to Link to the Past.

If there was a version of this game that almost wholly removed the writing, Machinarium-style, I would strongly recommend that version to people. Alas, there is not. I think the art and music in the game are impressive in the extreme, but the narration/dialogue writers should be ashamed of themselves if they thought what they produced was in any way good.

why, exactly, does "[the game need] to decide whether it wants to be beautiful and serene, or whether it wants to bash you over the head constantly with sarcastic narration and backhanded compliments?" is it not allowed to try and do both? this is a game that never takes itself seriously, and to do so will severely limit your enjoyment. i mean, read this tweet

"the girl told us to seek the sonorous spumes of the three sylvan sprites & send them skyward with the song of sworcery."

it might piss some off and strike them condescending that they use alliteration and language to comedic effect, but i think it's awesome. i would also argue that you might be misinterpreting a lot of the narration- with tweets like "we got the megatome & we are the smartest" or "we got the gold trigon. we are so awesome." i don't think their intention is to ridicule the player- that doesn't really service anything. to me those tweets just come across as overly earnest ways of broadcasting in-game successes.

i get the sense that this game and/or the writing somehow offended your sensibilities, which i can't directly speak to. i will fully recognize that the writing does strike a very specific tone, one that has proven to be divisive. but to claim the writers 'should be ashamed of themselves' is very judgmental. it is completely legitimate that you find the writing to be poor. that doesn't make it universally so.

regarding the hipster stuff- this is a personal pet peeve of mine so i apologize in advance for indulging in this. first of all, i wouldn't call this game 'intellectual'- the puzzles are simple and although the game does make efforts to use an extended vocabulary- i don't think that makes it intellectual. and what's with the double standard, even if it applied? why is it unfair to call some games hipster, but not sword and sworcery? and then you whip out a hipster-checklist- that by very definition is reductive- as if the entirety of all social groups and norms could be reduced to a checklist. i will grant you that the humor and emphasis on music in the game both might appeal to whatever definition of hipster you have in your mind, but your criteria are ridiculous. the EP thing i think is a comment on the length of the game- extended plays are shorter than albums, this is like patrick in the QL said, "the short story equivalent of a videogame." it's not like some 'hipster' in the app store or on steam is going to be like "hey, this is an EP. i like EPs. i will definitely buy this." the vinyl record- it serves the infrastructure of the whole game. given the prominence and importance of the soundtrack, the length of the game, the mechanic of flipping the record for the dream/waking worlds- it all fits and makes sense. i don't think they decided to put vinyl record imagery in their game first and THEN decided to build the game around that- all for the sake of appealing to hipsters? i don't buy it. also- there are genuine and sincere moments in the game. if you want examples, read the megatome- dogfella, logfella, and the archetype all offer thoughts on martyrdom and 'the woeful errand' that i found resonant. the ending and the jam with jim guthrie both are beautiful moments as well. and finally- the twitter integration itself. is twitter considered identifiably hipster? <-- that's a legitimate question, i honestly don't know. i don't use it, so i'm not aware of it's 'typical' user. i only tend to encounter twitter when i watch stuff on the internet that has a fan-feedback segment.

a hipster used to be a middle class white dude who was into jazz during the 40s. it used to mean one who is co-opting a culture different to their own. now it seems the term mostly gets thrown around on videogame forums to dismiss forms of entertainment that somehow offend the status quo.

What did I do while I watched this video?

I was shadowing the mouse pointer with my own the entire time; It was fun.

That cave always reminds me of Vinny for some reason.

3 to 4 hours? That's longer than I expected. I only like 30 minutes of the game when it came out. I should return to it.

"zero filler" except for slowly walking through the same 5 areas 30 times and having to fight the same enemies repeatedly for no reason. its a cool game and all, but blimey, the WALKING. god forbid you accidentally leave a dream early and have to spend 5 minutes walking to the moon grotto and back(making you repeat a fight). also i think it gets a little too much credit for world building when it's climax is just a big twin peaks homage. the game is 40 minutes of intrigue surrounded by 2 hours of boredom.

now do a quick look for death rally! and epoch!

@mellotronrules: Fair points. I think we can agree to disagree on this one.

In theory, could you buy a Windows 8 tablet, run Steam and play this?

Hm.

Well, Patrick and Brad, I think this game's art style is garbage. So there.

I sense the quality, but it doesn't spark a resonance, sadly.

When I got to that cave in the game I immediately thought of Vinny and looked for a quicklook to see if GiantBomb agreed...