Motherboard

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the most popular games on mobile phone platforms, it’s that nearly every one of them can be summed up in a single authoritarian sentence: “Match colored blocks vertically.” “Slice falling fruit by swiping your finger.” “Slingshot cartoon birds into buildings to squash green pigs.”

But woe be the App Store henchman who is tasked with writing a product description for Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP in one, three or even five short statements. At its simplest, I suppose calling it “a four-part surrealist videogame poem that takes place inside the dusty dreams of an old vinyl record” might give players a vague idea of the strange world of audiovisual splendor that awaits them. But overall, it would hardly do justice to this entrancing and highly anticipated collaborative work from developer Capybara Games, pixel artist Craig “Superbrothers” Adams and Canadian singer-songwriter Jim Guthrie. To wit, this tiny trifecta has managed to fit more soul and sophistication into a $5 iPad game than any over-budgeted, overwrought $60 RPG clone I’ve played in recent memory.

At first blush, S&S:EP looks and plays something similar to those old PC adventure games like King’s Quest and Secret of Monkey Island, with not-so-subtle dashes of Legend of Zelda sprinkled throughout. But almost as soon as you notice them, these retro-fantasy influences peel away at the seams to reveal a complex and oddly endearing mixture of pop culture, humor and deeply atmospheric audiovisual gameplay.

The main character, a charmingly lanky minimalist abstraction of a female warrior, traverses a lush world of blocky yet beautifully detailed backgrounds that seem less like an aesthetic tribute to the ‘retro’ games of yore and more a deliberate experiment in mosaic minimalism. Artist Craig Adams has been perfecting this unique style over the years, and to see it fully realized in a multi-layered, interactive landscape is nothing short of breathtaking.

It’s here that the iPad truly works its magic. Nearly everything you touch visually and audibly springs to life, turning every area into a small palette of sights and sounds that can potentially be used to advance the game’s staunchly linear but deeply engaging plot. The tree branches sing to summon elusive forest spirits. Your finger rubs rainbows into the sky. Waterfalls get plucked like harp strings — The environment is your instrument, and it plays to the tune of Jim Guthrie’s hypnotizing soundscapes as you slowly unravel the world before you in your quest for the legendary Golden Trigon.

I’ve discussed before in great detail how game music needs to embrace the interactive nature of videogames if it’s going to truly establish itself and the medium it calls from. And while I’m still puzzled as to what the perfect union of audio, visuals and interactivity might look, sound and play like, I’m going to say that Sword & Sworcery offers a fairly compelling answer to this dilemma.

I hesitate to call any part of Jim Guthrie’s soundtrack “background music” being as how it so frequently inhabits the foreground. But even during the more cinematic sequences, you’ll find that the smartly-placed audio cues rarely fail to stir emotion or simmer the mood — Warm synths and a bouncy bassline fill the calm night air as you trek through the forest. Somber piano chords accompany a thunderstorm as the slow rhythmic strumming of a guitar begs you to press onward through the maelstrom. No matter where (or when) you are in the game, sound advances and retreats like the tides, filling your ears with virtually seamless waves of ambience.

Flipping between the waking world (“Side A”) and the dream world (“Side B” — yes, I really do love the idea of the game being a record), nearly everything has its own unique musical theme, determined in large part by the phases of the moon. Part of the game actually asks that players wait through a full lunar cycle in order to find what they seek and advance the plot. Fortunately it asks and doesn’t demand, and a clever enough player will find ways around this if they think in the right direction.

But rarely does Sworcery put you in a situation where you feel completely and utterly stumped, and oftentimes a tiny bit of contemplation or attention to the environment will reveal the path you must take next. The game’s inhabitants will also offer hints in the form of psychic “tweets” that can be divined with the help of a musty old book called the Megatome. I particularly liked how the less-recent tips get time-stamped “In Days of Yore.”

And speaking of tweeting, “social support networks,” the game says, “will play a significant positive role in the outcome of S:S&S EP.” Most mobile phone games tack-on this functionality to allow broadcasting of high scores, achievements and the like through Facebook, Twitter, et al. But Sworcery ‘s take on the ’social gaming’ thing is a bit different.

Basically, every line of text in the game is intentionally written in less than 140 characters, making literally every part of the story tweetable. A #sworcery hashtag appended to the end of each tweet allows for easy tracking of which bits of text players find most interesting/clever/funny/whatever, and all the data gets neatly compiled here. It’s a peculiar but strangely compelling feature that not only lets folks experience the story more socially (I found myself in several Twitter discussions about miracles, non-rhyming ghost dudes and loathsome rainbows), but stands to highlight an important underlying trait of the game’s writing: Humor.

Fantasy games tend to speak their own language because their nature demands the illusion of a consistent and realistic world. But the creators of Sword & Sworcery have chosen not to do this, and I kind of love them for it. The prose of the storytelling takes a humorous, almost irreverent tone, leaving plenty of room for chuckles, rock & roll and reality-bending goofiness while remaining subtle enough to not distract from the game’s audiovisual grandeur. It’s a down-to-earth approach that really seems to show the personalities of the creators, and reminds players to just chill out and not to take things too seriously.

And that’s really why I love Sword & Sworcery EP: It’s a game that feels like it was made by people. With inimitable style and lighthearted wit, Sworcery starts with a handful of tropes and goes on to boldly invent its own history, channeling energy from our collective dreamscapes into a captivating gestalt of sight, sound and play.

Pick this one up. Your senses will thank you.