Why Yes, a Literal Piece of Shit Can Be the Hero of a Video Game

In 2011, indie game studio Capybara changed the gaming world. Their release, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, was an abstract adventure game, critically adored, academically inspired, garnished with awards, and played by over a million players. Now, in its latest offering, the gaming studio has turned to turds (literally) as playable characters.

Super Time Force, and special edition Super Time Force Ultra (STFU for short), is a guns blazing calamity so outrageous you can control a turd named 'Squirty Harry' that lights his own farts on fire with a magnum. The Toronto-based outfit isn't exactly predictable, even though this isn't the first time they've made a game heavy on bodily functions.

"What isn't too clear with our known gameography is that we've always prided ourselves in our trying of new things," says Kris Piotrowski, Capybara's creative director. "New mechanics, new ideas, but we're also sort of weirdos about stuff. Super Time Force was a whole bunch of concentrated energy fired off in one shot. Every stupid joke we could possibly hit. When's the next game where you can combine a skateboarding dinosaur with a walking piece of crap with a magnum, and use the magnum to light farts on fire while barfing? Probably never. We're probably never going to do that again. It's like a world first."

Many game companies have laid claim on an unofficial identity. When you look forward to a release from, say, Ubisoft or Rockstar, you're anticipating an experience similar to games they've released before. For example, a lot of traits are shared between Watch Dogs, and Assassin's Creed,or Grand Theft Auto, LA Noire and Red Dead Redemption—and it's that continuity getting players salivating for the next game.

That reality is even louder for independent game makers, who have intimately more control over their creative decisions. Christine Love (Digital: A Love Story, Analogue: A Hate Story) has built a tradition of visual novels housing narratives within digital files. Some of Lucas Pope's games take place in the same universe, like Republia Times and Papers, Please.

"You see certain studios and say, that's their style," says Piotrowski. "With Capy I've wondered what that path was, since it can sometimes seem like a dice roll. I guess now I start to see a little more, it's not necessarily random."

Before working on Super Time Force, Capybara was in pre-production for Below, a wordless, minimalist dungeon crawler that seems in many ways a spiritual sequel to Sworcery. Having the pattern broken by a fart-joke savvy, action game may seem conscious, but it happened somewhat by chance—Super Time Force was first invented during a game jam. That said, being pigeonholed to a certain style was something Capybara has struggled with before.

The games that first put Capybara in the audience's favour, albeit for completely different reasons, were gem puzzlers. Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is a fantasy strategy battle game and Critter Crunch is a game about glossy eyed fuzz balls eating bugs and vomiting rainbows into each other's mouth.

Recently, Piotrowski and Capybara co-founder Nathan Vella, discussed the studio's future, because it was clear that while they were making good games, they were making very similar ones. Piotrowski found that being intimidated by your own identity is a problem that can be solved by not thinking about it too much.

"I'm more comfortable with what we're doing right now," says Piotrowski. "Either if it's on one side of the coin or the other, either difference, the projects tend to fall into the Super Time Force madness: barf jokes, poo, whatever, or the kind of more stuck-up hipster-emo whatever, folks decide to call them adventure games. Whatever people want to throw our way, we do that."

Having meditated on the matter, Kris seems to be happy to be in a place where the studio can function independently and pursue whatever shooting star of an idea catches in their eye. Even if that means making games featuring bloodthirsty turds with magnums. While a persistent identity can be a good thing, they'll always focus on quality over consistency.