Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP

After quite a delayed release, I bought this game for iPhone earlier this year thanks to a long publicity campaign involving the eerie Audience Calibration procedure and the slightly less convoluted Walk In The Woods which got me immediately hooked on the game’s distinct visual style.

Sworcery was created by a man called Craig D Adams, who refers to himself as Superbrothers, “An ambiguously pluralized & irritatingly cryptic audiovisual art & design organization located in Toronto.” Adams started his career as an illustrator in the early 2000s. He developed his pixel-art style to be used as still images before moving on to animation. He describes his art style as a 21st century interpretation of the archetypical old school videogame adventure, so it seems natural that he progressed from stills to motion to a fully interactive experience.

During the very early stages of developing Sworcery, Adams stated that he was creating something “special.” Needless to say the game is very experimental, Adams described what he was doing as “A brave experiment in Input Output Cinema.” There is presently no set definition of this genre which he dubbed, personally I think the only way to know what it means is to experience it for yourself.

The game is introduced by a character known as the archetype who acts as your guide through the game and speak directly to you as a player. Once you sort of understand what is going on, the scene jumps to the world of Sword & Sworcery and you take control of a woman known only as The Scythian (shown above.) From here, most of the objectives are achieved by walking through forest landscapes and interacting with the limited inhabitants of the Caucasus. The whole thing is very slow paced and gives you a lot of opportunities to take enjoy the scenery and listen to the music, which the developers seem to have put a lot of emphasis on. The game doesn’t take long to complete, depending on how much time you spend strolling around and jumping from the real world and the confusingly similar Dream World, where everything is not as it seems…

Sworcery Achieved the IGF Mobile 2010 “Achievement in Art” award and can definitely be classed as a work of art as well as a game or interactive experience. This is achieved through the visual style, the unique dialogue style and the beautiful music provided Jim Guthrie.

Praise/Reviews/Explanations of S:S&S EP
IGN
Destructoid
Area 5
Sword & Sworcery.com
Capybara Games

Investigative Study-Possible Themes

Whatever the topic of my essay is, my main focus is on Indie gaming and development. There are plenty of places to get inspired, including articles written for Indie Games: The Weblog, essays from Lost Garden and my personal favourite, Less Talk More Rock by Superbrothers. My thoughts about a more detailed subject matter are currently floating around a possible 3 outcomes.
1. Narrative vs Gameplay
I think there is a lot to say about this in regard to Input Output Cinema, a gaming genre which focuses on its contents to create an experience rather than its gameplay elements, which could potentially be very few. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP would come into it somewhere, compared to a game with little narrative or visual elements. A book which goes into a lot of detail on the subject is First Person: New Media as Story, Performance and Art. The name says it all really.

2. 2D vs 3D
Although there is a lot to be said about this matter, I don’t really feel like this is a good route to go down. I think preference is very much a matter of opinion, and even in mind opinion there isn’t one of these which is better than the other. However, I could explain how the 2D genre is beneficial to Indie developers who have great ideas but not the 3D software experience (like me!) With 2D games still showing signs of popularity, even among younger audiences, any one with an idea can be a game developer. My inspiration for this topic came from a book called The Computer Game Design Course, which uses case studies to talk about different aspects of gaming.

3. Motivation and Objectives in Gaming
There’s also a section about this in The Computer Game Design Course, and although I’m not sure this will be a successful essay topic, it got me thinking. Games like S:S&S EP and my recent discovery Coma on Newgrounds are enjoyable to play, mainly because they use nice imagery to create a feel unique from most other games. But in both of these cases, the player is hardly ever rewarded for their participation. If motivation to play is acquired by some kind of reward such a high score or level, then what makes these games enjoyable to experience? It questions the ideal that people like to play games for the sense of achievement which is felt when the objective is complete.

Specialist Project: First Thoughts

Inspiration
There currently seems to be a movement of content and audience within the gaming genre defined by Graig D Adams (aka Superbrothers) as “Input Output Cinema.”
Input output cinema seems to fall into the category of gaming, but these experiences bear few similarities to what is commonly depicted as a video or mobile game. Traditionally, video games involve a character embarking on some kind of venture in order to complete an objective, whether this objective is to defeat enemies, collect items or simply manoeuvre from one place to another. In all instances, the player must combine skills and cognitive abilities if they have a hope of success. Since the emergence of games systems aimed at casual gamers, games have broadened to have simpler, less time-consuming objectives. This has aided in the popularity of mobile gaming, which in turn has had a hand in creating input output cinema.

Examples
Many examples of input output cinema currently take the form of experimental indie games, waiting for the genre to be properly clarified. These experiences have existed since the dawning of indie games onto home systems and mobile devices, but the name was not penned until Craig D Adams created his iOS masterpiece Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP.

This experience for iOS has been described as “an album you can walk through.” The game follows a basic storyline but is essentially about exploration of two strange worlds, and what can be achieved by exploring different parts of these worlds at different times. As an added bonus, the game was designed to be very visually appealing accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack by Jim Guthrie.
The style of the game was beautifully re-enacted when Ben Burbank wrote his interactive goodbye letter “So long old friends” when he resigned from EA.

This was never intended as a game, but represents the input output cinema genre quite well. In the experience, the player controls Ben as he leaves his old work building and passes his work-mates on the way out. You can talk to each member of his old team and he relates special messages to all of them, as he might have done in a traditional goodbye letter. There is no skill involved and no particular objective other than to talk to people. There is no reward for your efforts, the whole thing is simply an experience controlled by the user.

My Objectives
As my background is mainly in motion graphics, I’m classing this project as an experiment into Interactive Motion Graphics. I want to create something which will resemble current Input Output Cinema projects, in an appealing visual style. My choice of software is based on current game development software. I’ve spent a lot of time familiarising myself with pixel-art software Graphics Gale, although I’m not entirely sure I want to travel down the pixel art route just yet. I’ve also been learning how to code in GML for Game Maker over the summer, which is a great programme for creating anything interactive. I will definitely be using this in order to achieve the final result, which will probably take the form of an executable for Windows, though there is the possibility to port to iOS devices or Mac.
Over the summer I used Game Maker to make this example of Input Output Cinema using characters from the S:S&S EP world. I used this as a chance to really get to know the software and my own abilities.

Previous development and inspiration can be found at my old Blog Life In Standard Definition.

Two Days To Go

This post refers to a post a previously wrote on my old Blog.
In a couple of days I will be briefed on what I will be studying over the next year. This third year and the projects I will be undertaking are essentially self initiated, so the year encourages self-exploration and development. They year is broken into two main practical projects, the Specialist Project and the Extended Major Project. These projects can be interpreted in many different ways, but personally I see the SP as an opportunity to explore and the EMP as a chance to develop.
Over the course of the year, I plan to make a fully playable, interactive experience. This is something I have never done before, but I wanted to challenge myself to make something really rewarding for my last year of study. I have a lot of the key skills down, so there is little I still need to learn. The upcoming Specialist Project will act as a way to bring together everything I know and apply it to the basis of my interactive experience.
For everything I don’t know, the Internet has an answer. These three links all provide really good advice from experienced industry professionals.

1. Indie Games: The Weblog
This is a really interesting Blog, which is updated regularly enough that something new is there every time I go to read it. There are some great articles and interviews with indie developers, as well as my favourite entries- guides to the best free games available on the web. It also archives some of the best free games from the last couple of years, so it’s really easy to find great games you may have overlooked. As I’m classing my upcoming project as a kind of indie development, I think it’s interesting to keep an eye on what other developers are doing.

2. Game Career Guide
There are a lot of features on this site I didn’t find especially useful, especially as I live in the UK and most of the “career help” is pretty irrelevant to me. The article I found most helpful was this one, which can basically be used as a checklist to see if you’re developing to a professional standard. I guess a lot of what was written would have become apparent once I started proper game development, but this way I don’t have to think about it.

3. Lost Garden
This Blog is maintained by a guy who once worked for Epic Megagames and he just makes everything he says sound like absolute law. There’s a lot of really good advice for people who are serious about becoming indie developers, including resources and step-by-step help. There’s a lot of long paragraphs to go through, but if you get bored you can always check out some turtle Karma Sutra in the art section!