notes: no sword no sworcery

'The Greatest Explorer' is an illustration by comics artist and Superbrothers advisor/contributor Dustin Harbin. This artwork provides a clue about the genre and tone of the new Superbrothers project, although it isn't representative of the art style we're busily establishing.

Before we delve too deep into the concepts powering the new Superbrothers project it may be helpful to tear down some expectations and lay a fresh foundation using Sword & Sworcery as a reference point.

Project & Process                                                                                                         

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (2011) is the first videogame from Superbrothers, we were involved as a co-creator alongside Capy, with Jim Guthrie as inspiration and composer. We handled every pixel, every word. Many of the concepts originated with us, many of the songs and sounds are where they are mostly because that's where we put them. That said, as the project wore on it became more and more collaborative. While we set the concept in motion and captained the ship for much of the journey we eventually hit some rough seas and our collaborators helped us through, kept us moving. In the end the project probably felt like an authored expressive work and a handmade patchwork quilt, and while we carried a heavy creative load the experience was bolstered by contributions, feedback and good ideas from all corners.

This unannounced new project is the second videogame from Superbrothers, we are involved as a co-creator alongside the until-now unknown Pine-Scented, with Scntc as inspiration and composer. It's likely we'll handle pretty much every pixel, it's probable we'll be involved with every word. Many of the concepts have originated with us, but in this case the root concepts go back years and they have evolved in conversation with Pine-Scented in that time. Scntfc's involvment on this proejct will be roughly analagous to Jim Guthrie's involvement on Sword & Sworcery, in that we'll be making detailed requests and then placing songs and sounds in the project, and then we'll be keeping the conversation going so we can shape the sound component together. Our hope with this project is that with our chosen platforms, our more relaxed schedule and with Scntfc's expertise we'll be able to explore the audio possibility space quite a bit more than was possible on the previous project.  As with Sword & Sworcery, this new project will be both an authored expressive work and a handmade patchwork quilt, and while Superbrothers, Pine-Scented & Scntfc will be carrying the creative load, the finished project will no doubt be bolstered by contributions and good ideas from all corners, because that's just how it oughta be.

Outline: Basics: Input, Rhythm, Duration, Flow, Structure                                                                      

Sword & Sworcery was built for the touch input of iPhone. It had a laid-back rhythm, a kind of hang-out vibe. We didn't require a lot of precision or hand-eye co-ordination on the part of the audience except in a handful of battles sprinkled in here and there. Sword & Sworcery's critical path* linear story-focused experience lasting around three to five hours, and while the audience was given little pockets of space in which to roam, narrative progress was generally pretty narrowly gated**. The flow of the story was broken up into a handful of explicitly-presented 'sessions' and each session had an estimated time for completion, so that the audience would have some expectation about how much time to plan for, however the third session deliberately abandoned the player, and consequently we imagine a fair percentage of players abandoned the quest at this point and never saw the end of the narrative. Once the audience reaches the end of the story, Sword & Sworcery is basically complete, there are few reasons to return to explore the world.

* critical path= series of actions necessary to advance a videogame campaign towards completion

* gating = a gate in this context is a set of conditions a player must meet before advancing

For this unannounced new project we'll be keeping touch input in mind, and we have a scheme that would lead to a release built around a laid-back spectator-and-listener friendly rhythm that we think would be appropriate for iPhone, iPad & other such machines... but this time around our primary design focus is on the videogame controller input with its many buttons and joysticks, and consequently we will are targetting more traditional videogame platforms including computers.

We're imagining a critical path that would require only a moderate familiarity with a videogame controller, and we are thinking this critical path would be only a moderate time investment, say three hours or less, probably broken into roughly hour-length chunks... and at the end of this critical path we would plan to let a percentage of the audience go, hopefully satisfied with their experience, maybe thinking about some narrative payoff and emotional trajectory.

More dedicated audience members would quickly discover that this critical path is only the most visible part of the whole. The critical path could be understood as the pilot episode and everything else could be understood as a season's worth of optional exploration and exercise, although the pilot would contain the bulk of the narrative elements and the season would focus more on systems and free-roaming. The audience would be quietly invited (but not pressured) to continue on beyond the critical path, and the project would be built so that the audience would naturally want to dig deeper, to see what's beyond the horizon, to climb every mountain and explore every cave, to roam, to recognize and better understand the systems that govern the world, the whys and the hows, to find rabbit holes of surprising complexity and depth, to discover unexpected locations, phenomena and creatures, to delve into lore.

Tone: No Winks, No Nods                                                                                                              

The joking self-aware tone of Sword & Sworcery was there from the start. We added the 'w' to the name/logo early on to kind of let people know that yes, we are going to attempt to make a kind of high concept, beautiful, expressive, music-inspired art-heavy videogame... but we'll crack jokes too. The Twitter component was built with iPhone in mind, and late in the creation process, as the text elements proliferated in an effor to paper over the gaps in the experience, we began to shift the bombastic, poetic, self-serious Robert E. Howard style language towards a kind of light-hearted tone and jokes inspired by Twin Peaks, Scott Campbell and 2010/2011 era Twitter. We extended this very specific tone into our trailers, website, and outward-facing PR. We're proud of the script and the very specific tone, we think it was fresh on day 1 and it's appropriate in-game... but after the script was posted piece by piece to Twitter it quickly got over-exposed. As time wore on, as the project stayed visible post-launch, as other releases had to be announced, and the same very-specific tone was employed... well, it started to grate on me, and no doubt on others too. The context-free wilderness of the internet is a hostile place for subtlety and anything resembling irony. Sword & Sworcery's true heart is very sincere, and this sincerity comes through in-game in quiet moments, and particularly at the end... but the understandable perception of the project is that it is detached, too-cool to care. Some critics have observed that some fourth-wall-breaking comments and pop culture references undermine the credibility of the world and its story, and this undermines the overall cohesion and lasting power of the work... and while this isn't necessarily the case, it has the ring of truth about it. Anyways, it is what it is, and we're proud of it all, it was the right tone for the project, genuine in its way, and we think it'll prove to be a worthy time capsule of the year 2011... but it's time to move on, to adapt, to grow.

With this new project we want to make a clean break with Sword & Sworcery's joking self-aware tone. We are going to attempt to make a high concept, beautiful, expressive, music-inspired, art-heavy videogame... and we'll have our heart quietly but steadfastly on our sleeve the whole time. It's likely this project will have a Twitter component but whatever it is, it will be very much backgrounded and designed as a convenience for the audience. We will be taking great pains to avoid relying on text, the goal is to plough our time and energy into the systems and audiovisual presentation. This honest, straightforward, no-nonsense tone is what we're hoping to extend into our trailers, website and outward-facing PR. More signal, less noise. We want to avoid anything that could be seen as posturing, or overly-sophisticated, or intentionally oblique. We want to create a project, an experience, and a universe that stays true to itself, something worth investing time into, with no references, no winks, no nods and definitely no smirks. All that said, there'll probably be plenty of opportunities for light-heartedness, but these might appear in the form of 'player narratives' or 'funny things that happen and are permitted by the systems'. 

Themes: No Sword, No Sworcery

Sword & Sworcery was designed to be 'an archetypical adventure' built upon the most common mythic concepts: a lonely warrior on a quest in an unfamiliar wilderness, exploring a darkened dungeon sword-in-hand, retrieves a sacred relic and is then embroiled in a struggle with shadow spirits and sinister sorcery. The phrase 'sword and sorcery' was coined to describe the kind of lusty, blood and wine and fire and brimstone short stories written by Conan The Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard, whose poetic prose was a constant source of inspiration for the proejct. Naturally, our story had a sword, a primary tool used in several battles, some of which ended with a lethal blow. Our story had a lot to do with 'sworcery' and it included a variety of imagined things including miracles, telepathy, telekinesis and cryptozoolgy. The world was presented in the now well-established hard-edged pixel style we have been exploring and refining for ten years, a style that naturally refers to the past, to the videogames of the 90s and 80s, a style that felt perfectly at home on the tiny display of the iPhone. Jim Guthrie's score was an eclectic mix of vaguely chiptune-sounding samples, progrock synths and funky beats, catchy melodies, occasional pockets of guitar and dreamy affected piano drones, a range of styles and moods that included all of the project's influences and tones.

This unnanounced new project is being designed to be 'a science fiction epic' and we're going to try to tackle the broadest, most resonant, most worthwhile themes. This type of story doesn't require a sword, and in fact tools of violence and lethality will be sorted lower than tools of investigation, exploration and survival. This story doesn't require sworcery either, there's no need for miracles or telekinesis, however it is likely that we'll have a few provocative 'what ifs', and some strategic leaps of logic and dream-imaginings will play a role. Beyond these broad thematic differences perhaps the most immediately noticeable shift with this project is that we'll be taking the opportunity to leave behind our distinctive hard-edged pixel style and carve out a new style of representation in 3-D, and on the audio side of things our collaboration with composer and sound designer Scntfc will lead us in an appropriate direction. We'll dig into these presentation aspects in the Sights & Sound post.

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We'll dig into these presentation aspects here:

•  Sights & Sounds

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