Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP Review

By John Teti Published 24 March, 2011

Tell me a stwory.

Version tested: iPad

There's a difference between admiring a piece of art and loving it. Admiration is cerebral. You can evaluate a thing on its merits and talk yourself into admiring it. But love happens. It can be explained, sometimes, but not premeditated. Love creates movement in the soul; admiration stands there and smiles.

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is built to be loved, and I admire the hell out of it.

I admire its visual style, a lush, proto-Bohemian echo of King's Quest tableaux from the Apple II era. With brick-like pixels and a palette dominated by muted greens and blues, artist Craig Adams (he's "Superbrothers") hand-crafts the moody forest enclave where the large part of your quest plays out. As a result, the game is filled with scenes that ought to be framed and hung on the wall.

A round of applause is in order, as well, for musician Jim Guthrie, whose soundtrack starts from the game's strongest inspiration – Zelda – and gives the old adventure-anthem genre a more weathered and adult sound. Like Adams and his pixels, Guthrie layers miniature building blocks – short audio loops and esoteric effects – into impressive aural moments.

These perfectly commendable production elements come together in a perfectly commendable work that doesn't quite inspire lasting passion.

1

I'm a cave whose burps are made of rainbows, what's your deal?

The thin fabric uniting Sword & Sworcery's artistic collaboration is a vague quest. You play as The Scythian, a warrior-adventurer who tramps back and forth through the woods, joined on occasion by a few friends, seeking to wield the Megatome of ancient knowledge and awaken spiritual sprites by singing songs of Sworcery.

I could go into more detail, but it's hard to say too much without giving away the whole store, and it wouldn't make much more sense anyway. The premise is purposely ethereal. The specifics of the quest are not of primary concern to Sword & Sworcery; all that really matters is its quest-ness. Literary theorists will love it. Your guide (and possible overlord?) is a cigar-chomping corporate sort named The Archetype, for Pete's sake. The senior thesis practically writes itself.

In any case, don't get too wrapped up in the story. It's a framework, a justification for a world in which the player can explore or even just exist – Sword & Sworcery would be totally fine with that.

2

Is it rude to fight a bear-boar hybrid thing on someone's grave? Nah, that's probably OK. Right? Yeah.

There are elements you will recognise as traditional game-y stuff: some low-key puzzles, and a few very simple battles. For the most part, though, you browse at your own pace, preferably a languorous one. It never urges you to push ahead, and in fact encourages you to look around and take a break once in a while. As The Archetype puts it early on, "S:S&S EP does not produce the transcendent experience, it is merely intended to free the nervous system of ordinary patterns."

That's stilted nonsense, of course – it roughly translates as "This is not a transcendent experience, merely a transcendent experience" – but so is everything The Archetype says. I take it to mean that the game wants to be approached calmly, as a plaything rather than as a challenge to be vanquished.

It sounds like easygoing flower-child stuff. However, Sword & Sworcery isn't quite as chill as it lets on. It has an obsessive side, exerting a subtle yet encroaching pressure on you to freaking relax and enjoy yourself. The saccharine prose, the frequent swells in the music, the infinite cheerful orbs of glowing light – all of it gets poured on thick, as if every tiny detail of this game absolutely must fill your belly with sparkles of childlike wonder, or else something bad will happen, like some baby animals will die, probably.

There used to be a nice restaurant near my house. At every meal, a couple of minutes after the food had been served, the owner's wife would emerge from the kitchen to hover over us. She'd say, "It's delicious?" She was half asking, half insisting. I get the same vibe from Sword & Sworcery.

"TWEET THIS?" the game asks/insists, dozens of times. A message appears after solving a puzzle: "The dark moon reigns and we just woke a Sylvan sprite surrounded by four little round trees in the darkest woods." And a menu slides out: "TWEET THIS?" This feature shall henceforth be known as the Unfollow-matic.

See, it's not enough to have solved the puzzle and awakened the sprite. Simply experiencing a happy turn of events does not, in itself, sate this game's appetite for innocent joy. No, the moment must also be commemorated and celebrated.

I'm not just talking about the misguided Twitter-spam. Tweetability aside, the countless cutesy dialog boxes – "Are you feeling that peculiar vibe? It is a time of miracles!" – are overbearing enough themselves. After every minor success, yet another pithy scrawl descends on the scene to recap, and thereby diminish, what just happened.

3

This game is probably better if you play it stoned, but then again, so is every game.

This tic strikes me as especially odd given that last year, Superbrothers published an inspiring manifesto titled Less Talk, More Rock. It made a convincing argument for the beauty of nonverbal communication in games. And indeed, Sword & Sworcery is packed with gorgeous nonverbal flourishes. The trouble is that it won't shut up about them.

Still, I'd be inclined to look past the game's excessive earnestness if it were so wondrous as its trappings imply. Don't get me wrong, I was ready to be swept up in Sword & Sworcery's magic. Each of those delightful touches – a deer scampering away into the woods, a boss grappling with you in perfect rhythm to the music – seems to hold the promise of something greater.

In this case, however, the details are just that. It's not that they're incoherent. (That wouldn't even be a problem, as indie developers like Cactus and Mark Essen regularly create moving games of great incoherence.) No, all the little pieces in Sword & Sworcery speak to each other. They simply never add up to a larger whole. The spirit of the game doesn't aspire to much beyond a broad sense that adventuring is neat, and hey, joy is super, too.

4

The next time you read a Top 10 Games With a Cool-Looking Hut by a Reflecting Pond list, if it does not include Sword & Sworcery, you should probably get angry about that.

Maybe that's what The Archetype is getting at when he says, "S:S&S EP does not produce the transcendent experience." It could be that the world's sweet curios are meant to stand on their own, content in their simple pleasures. That's fair. But I also believe it's fair to ask that art at least transcend itself.

Sword & Sworcery does accomplish that feat in one respect, by broadening the idea of what a game can be. I'm not talking about touch controls (somewhat clumsy) or the fact that it's on the iPad (not the first or the last). Rather, this work stands out in its willingness to subdue the goal-oriented aspects of gaming while still embracing the idea of a quest. These are purely formal concerns, though, which leave me a bit cold.

I realise that's an odd thing to say about a game of such exceeding warmth. There's no doubt of the passion and heart that went into the creation of Sword & Sworcery. The artistry is extraordinary. The resulting art is not, not quite. Artistry is important, and I admire it to the fullest extent. In considerations of art, though, I want something more profound. Love, perhaps.

7 / 10

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is out now on iPad. A version for iPhone and iPod Touch will be released in April.

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
Picture of John.

About John Teti

John Teti is a writer and producer based in New York. His interests include games, TV, cake, and being a writer and producer based in New York.

Read more articles from John by visiting the John Teti archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (61) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • CrumpledPaper #1 1 year ago

    The degree to which this game has stuffed up my twitter inbox with 'clever' and 'cryptic' tweets has been annoying. Almost as if there had been an orchestrated campaign or something.

  • Ezzekhiel #2 1 year ago

    I'm not a native english speaker, but I have understood less than a half of what Mr. Teti (were u stoned when u wrote this MR. Tetri?) tried to explain in this review. What I got was "it's not a traditional game, it's not really art neither" but it still has 7/10 at the bottom.

    So my question is what is this game about? And is it worth it? Simple answer welcome :)

  • CaptainQuint #3 1 year ago

    What the fuck was it I just read? A game review? Where? A load of baloney?

    "There used to be a nice restaurant near my house. At every meal, a couple of minutes after the food had been served, the owner's wife would emerge from the kitchen to hover over us. She'd say, "It's delicious?" She was half asking, half insisting. I get the same vibe from Sword & Sworcery."

    Ha ha, what a complete div!

    Seriously EG, sort your bloody act out.

    Less Sight & Sound and more ZERO Magazine.
    Edited by CaptainQuint at 24/03/11 @ 13:22

  • onyxbox #4 1 year ago

    Got this this morning and looking forward to sitting down with headphones, a nice cup of coffe and have a play once the kids have gone to bed.

  • el_pollo_diablo #5 1 year ago

    It's original, it looks stunning and it costs £3. What's not to like?

  • soviet_ #6 1 year ago

    Great read and review

  • Widge #7 1 year ago

    Let me get this right, you walk around exploring, occasionally fighting and solving puzzles. Good nutshell?

  • Rack #8 1 year ago

    It seemed the author was more inclined to aggrandise his own erudition and loquaciousness than to provide enlightenment on the material. Or to put it another way What the hell was that?
    Edited by Rack at 24/03/11 @ 13:41

  • madgerald Verified Studio Head of PR & Marketing, Colossal Games LTD #9 1 year ago

    Gonna give this a try

  • henben #10 1 year ago

    Please don't publish reviews that use analogies because I'm as thick as shit-thieves, and any kind of mental indirection hurts my mind. Just stick to a basic description of the facts: how many pixels it has, and where. Or just recap the plot, and then put "fans of this game will enjoy this game".

  • kingmong #11 1 year ago

    interesting review - tip o the cap to john taytee

  • jonfon #12 1 year ago

    "This game is probably better if you play it stoned, but then again, so is every game."

    Except possibly anything from the first few Silent Hills, unless you like living in a waking nightmare.

  • nickthegun #13 1 year ago

    Great.. now I have this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThNQpRY-yfA stuck in my head

  • loopholezero #14 1 year ago

    excellent review

  • Shinetop #15 1 year ago

    I admire its visual style, a lush, proto-Bohemian echo of King's Quest tableaux from the Apple II era.

    I like how the writing in this review wasn't completely hammy and overly pretentious.

  • schnide #16 1 year ago

    Fantastic review - well done John. For those of you who like reading The Sun, allow me to summarise:

    "This game really wants to be arty, right, and keeps trying to tell you that's what it is. But that kind of makes it a bit not because it can't speak for itself. But it looks nice and is still quite cool. 'Kay? So 7/10"

  • tossum #17 1 year ago

    mmm... Deluxe Painty

  • marmaduke #18 1 year ago

    "The senior thesis practically writes itself."

    I think the phrase you're looking for is "pretentious indie bullshit". EA don't have a monopoly on tripe.

  • bliprunner #19 1 year ago

    Don't worry John. We know what you were on about.

  • lucky_jim #20 1 year ago

    It seems to me that a lot of people who complain about reviews actually want to be reading Which? magazine instead. Plenty of dry reviews out there on t'internet uf you want that.

  • CrumpledPaper #21 1 year ago

    "We spied a curious-looking nestbox with an inscription that read "Tweet & ye shall be re-tweeted". #sworcery"

    STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP ST...

  • conchis #22 1 year ago

    It's not a matter of what you enjoy reading. Just like the games that want to be a movie or a painting and ignore the fact that they are still games, this review has ignored the fact that it is a game review.

    Most people read these reviews to make decisions on whether to buy the game or not. However, this is an opinion piece that should be read after the game is played. There is little fact here to correlate to what the author is saying. An example:

    "No, all the little pieces in Sword & Sworcery speak to each other. They simply never add up to a larger whole. The spirit of the game doesn't aspire to much beyond a broad sense that adventuring is neat, and hey, joy is super, too."

    If we perhaps knew what those little pieces are, this would go further than just representing the author's experiences. The writing style itself does not bother me. However the review itself does not achieve it's intended goal; to help me make a decision.

  • mkreku #23 1 year ago

    I don't want a dry review either, but I must admit that this review was a bit much. I actually lost which game I was reading about after a while, and there was something about love but not quite? Maybe I am just too stupid.

  • ant72 #24 1 year ago

    The looks remind me of Future Wars. I'm getting all misty eyed..... I think I'll have a sit down.

  • Abscido #25 1 year ago

    Enjoyable and engaging review John, nice one.

  • Ninja_Tino #26 1 year ago

    I'm sorry, but Kristan should have reviewed this. He's the go-to guy for mobile games and I'd rather know what he thought. Just because a game's a bit arty doesn't mean it should get reviewed differently.

    Negged? Jaffe had a point regarding the way some gamers and journalists perceive 'art' games. Bunch of jokers.
    Edited by Ninja_Tino at 24/03/11 @ 19:04

  • InQ #27 1 year ago

    I'm not sure what I like better - this review or the game : ) Excellent work John Teti, thank you.

    S:S&S EP is not much of a game, but it's a unique experience, fresh and warm. Go and buy it to support the good guys : )

  • Shinetop #28 1 year ago

    It seems to me that a lot of people who complain about reviews actually want to be reading Which? magazine instead. Plenty of dry reviews out there on t'internet uf you want that.

    No, I just want to read eurogamer's regular reviews. Thanks all the same dude.

  • MrChuckles #29 1 year ago

    Can we just have a box at the end of reviews like this saying what type of game it is and what you do in it... I am none the wiser...

  • danjfor #30 1 year ago

    I thought this was a great review; one that really communicated what kind of game it is. I don't get what people are looking for, here. D'you think you're really gonna get a better sense of the game if Teti tells you the graphics are 7/10, the controls 8/10, the AI 6.5/10, etc?

  • thedaveeyres #31 1 year ago

    Jehn Teti... sprinkling words like confetti... he's a lovely man... with more hair than a yeti.

    Must dash, Kanye's on the phone asking me to re-write some lyrics... again *sigh*.

  • Pac-man-ate-my-wife #32 1 year ago

    I'm an experiencialist - I don't care the genre of the game, I care about the feelings it creates and worlds evoked; I love Red Dead Redemption and Animal Crossing, I love Limbo and Endless Ocean, I love Portal and Stacking. All wonderful worlds to play about in. I'm a pootler.

    I love this review. If I buy this game (and I surely will once the iPhone version is released) I know exactly what I'll get from it thanks to John Teti's artful prose, much better than the boring cookie-cutter IGN reviews that dominate.

    More like this please EG.
    Edited by Pac-man-ate-my-wife at 24/03/11 @ 16:46

  • schnide #33 1 year ago

    On further thoughts, if more reviews will jettison some of our lesser braincelled brethen..

    MORE, MUCH MORE LIKE THIS EG!

    Less hits though in the short term, obviously.

  • MdaG #34 1 year ago

    I refuse to play this on my iPhone. Either they release this on X360 or PS3 or I'll have to buy an iPad. :-(

  • Windypops #35 1 year ago

    Load of pretentious arse. Game looks alright though.

  • _LarZen_ #36 1 year ago

    Realy nice to read a long review of a iDevice game! Kinda confusing to understand what you mean in the review but could be me since im Norwegian and some of the words was unknown to me...hehe.

    But the score was high and I love what I have seen of the game so wil be getting this.

    Thanks and keep it up!

  • Rack #37 1 year ago

    @Schnide Do you not think a review could say at least a little more than that over 2 pages? If he mentioned the name of that restaurant then it would be hard to tell which had received greater scrutiny in the review.
    Edited by Rack at 24/03/11 @ 20:45

  • poopoo_interesting #38 1 year ago

    'This game is probably better if you play it stoned, but then again, so is every game.' True that.

  • urban #39 1 year ago

    This game is probably better if you play it stoned, but then again, so is every game. hahahaha

  • Xardan #40 1 year ago

    Really great review man. Best review i ever read...ever. But maybe thats because im stoned.

  • MisterCraig #41 1 year ago

    Can he... endorse soft drugs like that???

    Don't get me wrong but I laughed, but I can see thousands of 15 year old kids eyes widening!

  • Harmonica #42 1 year ago

    "Please don't publish reviews that use analogies because I'm as thick as shit-thieves, and any kind of mental indirection hurts my mind. Just stick to a basic description of the facts: how many pixels it has, and where. Or just recap the plot, and then put "fans of this game will enjoy this game"."

    @henben +10000

    Had no inclination to buy this game, but I read this review and now I still have no inclination to buy it but I enjoyed reading about it. Good piece.
    Edited by Harmonica at 25/03/11 @ 08:35

  • space_ace #43 1 year ago

    "Future Wars" yes, but mostly "Another World"..

  • Marijn #44 1 year ago

    Dear Eurogamer, please find a way to clone John Teti in order to make him able to write all your reviews. Thank you.

    Seriously though, what a great piece of game critique. If anything could be considered "new games journalism", this is it.

  • ShiroBen #45 1 year ago

    At first I was disappointed that this was iPhone only. After reading a few reviews, I'm not any more.

  • Marijn #46 1 year ago

    @22: You make an excellent point that I nonetheless completely disagree with. There are many, many examples of the "consumer guide" type of review, but to claim that this should always be the primary focus of a piece of a game review is far too limiting. What Teti has done here, as others have pointed out, is try and communicate the experience of the game, in a way akin to art criticism. Seeing as there is far too little of that going around, it's commendable that EG is willing to give some space to this approach.

    Besides, this seems to be the right type of game to write this kind of article about; no matter how much I'd want them to, EG is never going to take this tack with the new installments of Call Of Duty and Uncharted, for instance.

  • conchis #47 1 year ago

    I think I need to make a correction :) I was not suggesting that the review should become the "consumer guide" that most tech websites employ. From my perspective, this review has gone completely to the other side of the scale. I was looking for something that is more middle ground.

    There's nothing wrong with talking about the experiences a game is conveying. However, experiences are mostly subjective, more so in an interactive environment. Even composition artists would shy from describing the experience of something they created, the object in question should do that.

    But like I said, I am interested in hearing what Teti experienced. Particularly because he is very articulate. I just think it'd carry more weight and with a bigger audience if we knew what he was referring to. The only example I got in this review was the "TWEET THIS" pop-up

  • Harmonica #48 1 year ago

    I'm not sure what you expect for this type of game. Teti says, the game is ethereal, slight, and talking to much about it precisely is a giveaway. He describes it as more of an experience than a game, and reviews it as such, on its own terms (which is ideally how all reviews should be done).

  • Windypops #49 1 year ago

    I think my irritation with the review's pretension is that the reviewer is irritated by the game's pretension and is writing about it pretentiously.

  • Harmonica #50 1 year ago

    Yeah, see you're conflating pretension with 'writing eloquently and expressively about something'. He could use yer average bog-standard IGN tripe review language, but those writers are two a penny and say precisely sweet FA about games.

  • Matthew_Hornet #51 1 year ago

    Well, this review explains the game's faults clearly enough, and it's obviously not an excellent game. But games of this kind, for gamers like me who enjoyed Another World, ICO and Machinarium, are very rare on the iOS, and when one comes along we have to take what we get.

  • HistoryTeller #52 1 year ago

    Extremely well written review. Nice to see someone trying to describe games in other terms than pixels and health bars.

  • Windypops #53 1 year ago

    @Harmonica

    I'm doing no such thing. Nothing wrong with writing "eloquently and expressively", as long as you don't lose sight of the brief: to be a buyer's guide. The reviewer's meditations on love and restaurant proprietors are of no interest to me.

    Plus, if you're going to play the "games as art" card, then point to a game's pretensions, you should probably avoid being pretentious while doing so. You're left with the slightly uncomfortable feeling that the reviewer's trying to compete with the thing he's reviewing.

  • mukki #54 1 year ago

    Eagerly awaiting the iPhone version

  • mach7-7 #55 1 year ago

    Excellent review. Thanks John!

  • goldenbone #56 1 year ago

    Loved the review, and had fun with the game. More of this kind of thing please.

  • Harmonica #57 1 year ago

    "The reviewer's meditations on love and restaurant proprietors are of no interest to me. "

    They're part of analogies which inform the personal response Teti is giving ABOUT THE GAME. So they should interest you, if you have any interest in reading someone's opinion.

    You say buyers guide as if that dictates the entire style the review should take, which is to 'stick to the brief', which sounds to me like you're a lazy reader and you just want a bullet point list of features, pros and cons, scores out of 5 for graphics, a 'buy this game if you liked Another World' pullquote, and so on.

    Some people fool themselves into thinking that those kind of things say ANYTHING about games whatsoever, but they don't.

    Reviews of this kind which actually bring the writer's own personal experiences to bear on the thing he is talking about are absolutely vital. Especially when you have a game which is actually trying to 'be an experience' - so Teti has taken it on its own terms.

  • Windypops #58 1 year ago

    You appear to be having an argument with a straw man who's advocating "yer average bog-standard IGN tripe review language". If you could let that straw man know where he advocated such language, that'd be lovely, ta. Also, if you could explain PROTO-FUCKING-BOHEMIAN* to him, that would also be lovely. Talk slow! His head is full of straw.

    Whether you like it or not, a review is a buyer's guide. That's why it exists. No reason why it can't be well written. There's plenty of well written prose on this site, which is why I come here rather than, say, IGN. I felt the review failed on its most basic requirement, which is why I think it's bad writing. That opening paragraph alone could get it a spot on Pseuds Corner, if Pseuds Corner bothered with game reviews (I'm betting they don't for reasons of not wanting to be cruel to barrel-dwelling fish).

    *Obligatory insulting use of caps lock.

  • ElNino9 #59 1 year ago

    This game is probably better if you play it stoned, but then again, so is every game.'


    I give it a week before the Daily Mail get hold of that.

  • toastmodernist #60 1 year ago

    Agreed.

    Really wish the word pretensious would die a quick but painful death.

  • gsilverfish #61 1 year ago

    "No, all the little pieces in Sword & Sworcery speak to each other. They simply never add up to a larger whole. The spirit of the game doesn't aspire to much beyond a broad sense that adventuring is neat, and hey, joy is super, too."

    I am pretty sure this is why it is Sword & Sorcery--as a writing genre, it differentiates itself from other fantasy (typically your Tolkien-inspired "Epic Fantasy";) by the scale of the quest. The core examples of the genre are often old pulp magazine writings, so they tend to be short adventures with little connection between one another, the fate of the world is rarely at stake, and if the stories do add up to some kind of whole, it's the exception, not the rule.