What Sword & Sworcery does right

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is a beautiful, meditative game that can’t shut up about how beautiful and meditative it is. What it does right, though, is economy.

In the first episode you go down into the depths of a forgotten temple to steal a mystic treasure. On your way there, you fight one (1) wolf-monster. When you steal the treasure, you fight one (1) temple guardian. That’s all.

New orders, Games: Give me less shit to fight. My brain has a very limited ability to care about the things in your game. Throwing a million skeleton warriors at me when I exit the temple is guaranteed to stop me from caring about a single one. If I don’t care about something, why have you gone to the trouble of putting it in your game?

This applies across everything. Give me less traps, less NPC’s, less puzzles. The more shit you give me, the less I can care about any of it. The more shit you make, the less good you can make any individual element. Put as little into your game as possible, and make me care deeply about each bit.

Superbrothers is one of the only games I’ve played that’s tried this approach. The game pushes all it’s time into a very small amount of stuff: about 5 NPC’s, 3 monsters, 2 puzzle elements, all reappearing in subtly changing ways over the course of four hours. You spend all your time exploring around a hut owned by the two main NPC’s, in a main hub area that’s about five screens big. You trek all around it multiple times, unlocking new bits of it, solving different puzzles in it. It changes as you go through the game, culminating in a Dream-world that’s a distorted reflection of it.

The end result of this economy is that I can remember every single enemy in S&S. Think back to the last enemy you fought in a game. Was it a russian? A zombie? I know I can’t remember. Dozens of man-hours modelling, animating and voicing that whatever-it-was, and I can’t remember it at all.

Only put important things into your game. It’s a crazy bold new design paradigm, but I think it could work.

Help us help you help us all:
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Twitter
  • N4G
  • Reddit

About Jack McNamee

In the third year of a game design course in Queensland, Australia. Thinking a whole lot about games. Scrabbling desperately against the oncoming future.
This entry was posted in More games should do these things and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

5 Responses to What Sword & Sworcery does right

  1. Paul Zimmerman says:

    Agreed. This is far and away the best game I have ever played.

  2. 1. The many shades in brown, from dark to mild, will help you pick a unique one.

  3. Thank you for every one of your efforts on this site. My aunt really likes participating in investigation and it’s simple to grasp why. My partner and i know all concerning the compelling medium you create great guides on your website and in addition strongly encourage contribution from people about this subject matter and my daughter is really learning a great deal. Take advantage of the remaining portion of the year. You are doing a superb job.

  4. I’ve read several good stuff here goresso. Certainly worth bookmarking for revisiting. I surprise how much effort you put to make such a great informative site.

  5. resources says:

    What’s Happening i’m new to this, I stumbled upon this I have found It positively useful and it has aided me out loads. I am hoping to give a contribution & assist different users like its aided me. Great job.|

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *