By Jim Rossignol on April 3rd, 2012 at 8:51 am.
Capybara Games have confirmed that their beautiful, lo-fi iOS adventure game Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery will be arriving on Steam “very soon”. Good news, I think, because it’s a gentle, weird little game that does a lot with a little and creates an unusual atmosphere. Sort of nostalgic, but at the same time feeling quite modern.
There’s also going to be a Mac version, of course. Trailer below.
03/04/2012 at 08:57 alice says:
I have this on my iphone but I have never played it (because I rarely am in the mood for this sort of game when at the point I would want to be playing a game on my phone), so this is very welcome news.
03/04/2012 at 09:27 Oozo says:
I always wondered how it would play on an iPhone… I used to think that it was clearly designed for longer sessions and, above all, a bigger screen. (Well, not too big, since it was made with the iPad in mind.)
Anyway, I really liked it as an audio-visual experience (Jim Guthrie’s music challenged souleye’s PPPPPP as my favourite soundtrack of that year) , whereas the game part of it was more… humble. I imagine it will one day be filed under “early attempts in using the iPad in a meaningful way”, or “WOT came after MTV”, rather than “temporary future of the point&click adventure”. (Even though all of the above hold true in a way.)
03/04/2012 at 10:35 Saul says:
Apparently it was originally designed for iPhone, then released on iPad, then ported to iPhone. Which makes no sense, because you’re absolutely right – some sections are near-impossible to play on a tiny screen. I never got all that far for that reason, and I don’t own an iPad, so this PC release is indeed fabulous news, because it’s a very unique little game.
03/04/2012 at 10:09 abigbat says:
It is utterly brilliant and has some genuinely interesting mechanics, as well as the aforementioned soundtrack which is superb.
03/04/2012 at 10:09 grundus says:
Yeah, I bought it when it came out with the intent to play it (obviously), but found myself playing Space Invaders Infinity Gene or a Halfbrick game instead because they don’t require much thought or investment of time. S:S&S is really slick, no doubt about it, but I’m not sure it’ll feel quite as special on PC as it did on the iEtc. I still really want to get into it but I still really can’t do it.
03/04/2012 at 09:03 MOKKA says:
Finally!
03/04/2012 at 09:12 Hakkesshu says:
It’s a cool game and people should play it.
I really hope they change the part with the lunar cycles, though (without spoiling anything), because it was such a huge turnoff. Completely murdered the pacing. I left it unplayed for months and when I got back I completely forgot what I was supposed to be doing. I get what they were going for, but seriously fuck that part.
Great game otherwise.
03/04/2012 at 10:14 Dzamir says:
Same here, I left it at this part and now I don’t know/remember what to do :(
03/04/2012 at 13:13 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
I never realised when I played it that it was tied to actual lunar cycles. I just visited the cave that lets you change the phase of the moon (and in the game! I mean, only in the game).
03/04/2012 at 09:14 Anguy says:
I’m feeling a little nauseated by the shaky camera, but except for that it looks interesting.
03/04/2012 at 15:23 Dervish says:
I know it’s typical of Internet comments to be all-or-nothing but the shakycam is a real “What the hell were they thinking?!” issue for me. I think it’s awful.
03/04/2012 at 09:23 Drayk says:
I am playing it right now on my ipod. It’s a nice experience but i think it really fits the smartphone format.
Not sure how it will feel like on pc.
03/04/2012 at 09:29 Teovald says:
I thought that their commentary on their website “our app will never be ported to another platform, ever” could not be any stupider.
I stand corrected.
03/04/2012 at 10:28 Mo says:
Why is it stupid? They didn’t want to release a bad port. It’s like not making a “shitty console port”, except this time around the PC is the less expressive platform.
As for Android, it’s well documented that Android is expensive to port to, and doesn’t make much money in return (well, apart from free-to-play and ad-funded, but I doubt they’re interested in that)
Sounds like a sensible developer who values the integrity of their videogame over money to me…
03/04/2012 at 14:26 Teovald says:
I dit not make a big effort in my argument indeed, it was just random ranting :-).
Ok, so here is a better commentary :
It is not in any way a black & white situation where iOS devs become billionaires and Android devs make 10$ from theirs apps. In fact, most of the big studios publish on both platforms.
Sadly, even on iOS most of the developers do not make money from their apps. Cook divulged interesting numbers during the last earning call and some clever analyses have been made out of them.
There are also some successful or even very successful Android game developers and not all of them are big players. Windup Knight (which I highly recommend btw) had a really successful launch on Android and then on iOS by being smart and rely on Unity to make a cross platform game whereas they are a 3 persons team (and only one engineer). Their game is also as good on Android than on iOS.
Galcon’s dev (i believe it is a one man team but I am not totally sure) has been able to port his game from iOS to Android in only a week of work without any prior knowledge of Google’s platform.
There are maybe very good reasons against a port of ss&s-ep to Android. The devs I have cited are extremely competent and maybe even exceptional. An hard to maintain codebase (because of inexperience, hasty development or many other reasons) can also be an insurmountable obstacle when you try to make such a port.
I mainly made that comment because saying that you will never ever port your game to another platform seems like an incredibly silly thing to say. Most devs I know just state that they don’t have any plans regarding a port at the moment if they don’t have one, whatever the reason is. Because there are not a lot of valid reasons to do not port a game from a big platform to another big platform and in an fast changing ecosystem a choice that did not made sense 6 months ago is now obvious. And now they have changed theirs minds and have ported their game to the desktop, making their position even weirder.
03/04/2012 at 10:00 kwyjibo says:
Would rather see this pop up on Android, but I’ll grab it on Steam. Loved the look, loved the feel of the thing.
03/04/2012 at 10:16 Bluerps says:
It looks beautiful! The title is a bit weird, though.
03/04/2012 at 10:29 Fetthesten says:
Hmm. Never got very far in Sword & Sworcery, mostly because if there is something special in there, the game doesn’t do a very good job of making that clear. All I can remember is that the graphics were very nice, the writing did nothing for me and that the combat was… alright. I suppose there were some puzzles eventually, but the narration came across as too aloof to make me care about the game. Maybe that’s just me, though.
03/04/2012 at 10:43 Cinnamon says:
You sound too level headed to enjoy a game like this. Maybe it’s only for people who believe in the magical transformative power of art (and ipads).
03/04/2012 at 10:50 13tales says:
I like this trailer better. It is infinitely snappier, and weirder: http://vimeo.com/20379529
03/04/2012 at 11:00 sfury says:
I was hoping they’d port it for Android, but since I only have a phone and not a tablet – the PC would be better.
Anyway very glad I’ll finally paly it. :)
03/04/2012 at 11:05 MichaelPalin says:
ABOUT TIME! I have been wanting to play this game since they announced it.
03/04/2012 at 11:33 MichaelPalin says:
Wait, only Steam? Oh, c’mon!
03/04/2012 at 11:27 Arca says:
Finally! Completed it on the iphone when it came out and have been waiting for a desktop version to surface. The soundtrack used in the game is one of my favourites.
03/04/2012 at 12:07 Marijn says:
Wot I Think by John Walker incoming…
03/04/2012 at 14:10 alexheretic says:
So you’ve spent a year swanning around with my presumably ‘cooler’ cousin-platform, and now you want a go on me? I think not, game.
03/04/2012 at 14:17 deadly.by.design says:
For those who’ve played it through, how long of a game is it?
I don’t imagine it’s more than an hour or two, being a tablet game, pero estoy curioso.
03/04/2012 at 14:55 Oozo says:
howlongtobeat.com says that it’s somewhere between 5.5 and 6 hours, which seems about right to me.
03/04/2012 at 15:13 deadly.by.design says:
Sounds good — thanks!
03/04/2012 at 15:54 cqdemal says:
I finished this in about four hours using the lunar cycle ‘cheat’.
03/04/2012 at 15:45 noexes says:
While this is kind cool, I’m more excited that this means capy now has a game ported to PC by their own choice, which means we make get Critter Crunch at some point! Squee!!!
03/04/2012 at 17:14 bear912 says:
This news pleases me.