I am writing this review of Superbrothers Sword and Sworcery EP while listening to Sword & Sworcery LP The Ballad of the Space Babies. The first thing that you will need to know about S&S is that upon completion of this lovingly constructed video-game, you will be greeted by the name Jim Guthrie. Jim Guthrie is a musician. S&S is a game about music. Music is the sorcery of S&S. Sorcery reveals to you and the Scythian that you are instruments and that the world that you traverse is an instrument. It reveals that all of the instruments together create the music that is this far away world. If you hold your finger on the Scythian, she kneels and raises her arms, and you guide a blue light about the world to sing a song of sorcery. Trees, animals and light itself all contribute to your song. Everything responds to this music, even you. This music is none other than that of Jim Guthrie. His music fills every second of this game and is the gravity of S&S. Without it, the pixels would surely dissipate and disappear off of the screen, and you would be left staring into the white void that is your touch device. This is a metaphor, but not an exaggeration. It draws you in, invites you to rest, drives you to go on, pauses you in your tracks, instills dread, ushers triumph and elicits both joy and sorrow simultaneously.
To say that S&S is the charmingest video-game of all time is neither an understatement nor an overstatement, it is just a statement. It is truth. It is a game that magically extracts every pleasant memory of the first video-games that you ever played and combines it with the pure and simple joy of your most amazing childhood achievements (like jumping off of that really big rock in the woods). The most obvious source of the initial rush of nostalgia that will pour over you is the visual design. S&S is how your brain remembers the video-games of yore to look, rather than how they actually do. This game shows more with less. Each pixel is meticulously placed and animated to create a moving world. The Scythian’s every movement is mesmerizing, from the first time she sheathes her sword to every step afterwards, it is impossible to pull your eyes from S&S while it moves and it really needs to be seen. One of my favorite animations involves sitting in front of a fire. Never before have I believed a bunch of numbers running through a calculator to be so real. In fact, not once while playing S&S did I think of how the game was built, which is a wonderful and rare thing.
But you didn’t buy S&S solely to absorb graphical prowess through your eyeballs, you purchased S&S because you’re an adventurer. At some point in your life, probably multiple times, you pretended to have a sword in your hands, even when there was nothing in your hands. This is the genius of S&S, you don’t play as an adventurer, but as yourself guiding an adventurer. You play the role of a being peering into a mystifying universe through a tiny window. You are watching over and guiding the young adventurer that you once were, and with every fiber of your being, you want that young adventurer to succeed.
You also probably bought S&S because you like to play games. Which is good. S&S consists of pointing. Not with a cursor or any sort of tool. You just point, and that is where the Scythian will go. If you want the Scythian to talk to someone, you double tap on the character or object or whatever, and you will be greeted by a line of text that will put a grin of some sort on your face. If you forget what someone said, you can consult a magical tome and revisit every line of text in the game, so you won’t ever be too lost. The touch screen lends itself perfectly to the function of exploring S&S and feels completely natural. However, this is a game about adventuring, and as every adventurer knows, this means that this game has a lot of walking in it. Adventurers walk. They don’t run because they might exhaust their energy for the rest of the adventure, or they might overlook a small yet tremendous detail, such as a hidden path that can change the course of time itself. The Scythian walks a lot and you watch the Scythian walk a lot. And this is a good thing, because the walk animation is gorgeous, and the world that the Scythian traverses is gorgeous, and the music is gorgeous. This game is fucking gorgeous. But still, you will watch a lot of walking. There are also some puzzle type elements, but they’re pretty obvious most of the time. When they aren’t obvious, you usually just end up massaging the screen with your fingertips until you hear a distinctive sound, but there are a couple of these puzzles that end pretty spectacularly.
There is a reason that you had a sword when you went on your adventures, and that is to fight monsters that stood in your way. S&S features combat, but the combat is not the focus of the game. It is not even the secondary, or maybe even third most important element of the game, but it is worth mentioning due to the fact that it is in the game and that it is implemented well. Combat is, in essence, a series of quick-time events. But it is critical to note that this is well hidden, meaning you won’t have a big blue X appear on the screen with the word “LIVE” on it. You enter combat by rotating the device that you are using to a vertical position, and you proceed to engage the enemy in a series of carefully timed blocks and strikes. The mechanics on their own are not impressive, but the presentation and pacing are. There are only a handful of fights to be had in S&S, and each is a pulse pounding affair as a result of their scarcity. The low number of battles reinforces that fact that the Scythian is not a knight in shining armor, but an adventurer on a woeful errand. When she raises her sword in the midst of a warrior beating his shield like a war drum, it’s difficult not to have some sense of worry and dread for her. Technically, the combat is a little repetitive, but it is short, sweet, and effective. There is also a nice twist in combat as you progress through S&S, which some casual players may not appreciate as much as I do, in which your total health decreases as you go on. This makes absolute sense within the context of S&S, and I wish more video-games would follow this example.
A masterful soundtrack, exceptional sound design, brilliant visuals and a familiar yet quirky story (there is a story by the way) all work in harmony to deliver a monolithic video-game experience. There’s also a pretty neat real-time connection in S&S that coordinates with certain events in the universe that we actually walk around in, which is pretty awesome.
Go play this game.
