Sword & Sworcery Is Hauntingly Beautiful iPad Fun

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.”

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