The creators of Jett: The Far Shore and Sword & Sworcery, Superbrothers, are creating a modern “2D pixel mystery action game” in collaboration with an anonymous publisher. In what almost seems like a departure from the creators’ previous, wonderfully hipster experiments, it is advertised as “satisfyingly finished, immediately readable, fun, entertaining, and overall satisfying for a wide audience.”
“Hipster” is, of course, a terrible, weasel word – a loose cousin of the word “pretentious”, often used to close down any game that, say, has more than three syllables in the title, or isn’t immediately busy killing, or was made by someone who there is no crew cut. Let me be more specific, to the point of limiting myself: Sword & Sworcery is a kind of playable electronic album with a Zelda-style fairy tale woven into it, where you beat golden triangles in the forest. There’s still nothing like it. Kieron Gillen (RPS in Peace) wrote a lovely, indolent review back in 2012, summarizing it as “a game that tries to keep its sense of wonder intact while also undermining it with a world-weary, urban, cool cast.” I really like this paragraph from this excerpt:
Her insincerity is a mask. It’s the most sincere and unironic game I’ve played in ages. If his princess is in another castle, his princess is actually in another castle. It’s covered in layers of irony, but it’s based on the sincere belief that this shit means something. It may look like embarrassment for what it is, except it’s more like shyness. What is being discussed is too critical to be approached directly and crudely. You have to joke about it because if you take it seriously it will crash.
As for Jett: The Far Shore, it’s a jarring yet addictive, inventive, and sometimes poetic space shooter. Jeremy Peel summed it up as “equal parts wonder and frustration, an evocative adventure that feels brilliant under the thumb but whose creative systems feel stifled by stiff storytelling.” Personally, I really liked the countercultural specificity of the vision of interplanetary colonization, but I was less fond of all the repeated cliffhangers.
Superbrothers also contributed to Sound Shapes, a side-scrolling platformer from Queasy Games in which levels are synchronized to the soundtrack. I haven’t played this game, but the emphasis on music is comparable to other Superbrothers works.
Which brings us to the modern game. Have he deviously revealed it in the form of a job advertisement. This was apparently due to “moving from prototype to pre-production in ~October” and “development is expected to take several years, through late 2026 and early 2027.” They are currently looking for an intermediate technical designer with Unity experience and a gameplay specialist “to help us shape our mechanics, levels, combat, and game feel.” Both roles are distant, but “being Canadian is a bonus (due to easier formality).”
Despite my concerns about the Jetta, I’m always up for a modern Superbrothers project. Of course, I’m a little worried about the “wide audience” talk, but I’m probably overindulging and making the shitty assumption that “wide audience” =/= “smart.” Plus, “mystery pixel video game” is an auspicious combination of words. Let’s finish my favorite song from the Sword & Sworcery soundtrack by Jim Guthrie.
