By Andrew Webster, Ars Technica
The first time we saw Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP was just after the 2010 Game Developers Conference, when it was an oddly beautiful iPhone exclusive. Now the game is out for the iPad, with a new iPhone version to follow next month, and the scope of the project has grown fairly significantly. After less than 12 hours of availability, it became the fourth bestselling paid app on iTunes.
Ars recently sat down with some of the minds behind the game at Capy Games’ downtown Toronto studio to discuss how the game came to be, what it was like dealing with the early hype, and why the game just might change the iOS landscape for the better.
Sworcery first came to the attention of the gaming world when it won the Achievement in Art award at the 2010 Independent Games Festival. This helped the game gather some early buzz, but also set expectations for the final release quite high.
“It was obviously a huge positive for us,” Kris Piotrowski, the creative director at Capy Games, said of winning the award. “It was amazing to get that kind of feedback so early in the project. And also, because of that, we had the game on the floor and at the IGF pavilion. It was really amazing to see people digging just the simplest form of the game, which was just going for a walk through Craig’s paintings and Jim’s music, without a heck of a lot of what you’d call traditional gameplay there. Even so, the majority of the people seemed to enjoy that kind of experience.”
“It’s like we climbed the highest high-dive board at the local swimming pool and then said, ‘Hey everybody! Look at this, we’re gonna jump!'” explained artist Craig D. Adams. “And it’s our first high dive ever and it’s going to end badly. And that’s what it felt like: All eyes are on this project to deliver on this crazy promise.”
Team effort
The game itself is the result of a whole lot of collaboration. While artist/designer Craig “Superbrothers” Adams led the way and provided the look with his distinctly minimalist pixels, Capy handled the programming and much of the design, while musician Jim Guthrie provided the soundtrack. And the music plays an important role. Not just in how the game sounds, but also in how it was designed.
The team initially started with just the faintest idea of what the game was going to be. It would take place in a classic sword-and-sorcery world, it would be on the iPhone, and that’s about it.
“When we started I had pretty much zero firm ideas,” Adams told Ars.