Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP



Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP [sic] is an iOS (and as of April 16, 2012, PC) game about the exploits of a female warrior known only as the "Scythian" on her quest to accomplish great deeds. She also like uses twitter and talks with dudes and stuff. Some of the people are like totally cool or whatever. Is now available on Steam.


 * Action Girl: The Scythian.
 * Alliteration: At times, in the same style as old epics poems.
 * The All Concealing We: The narrator always uses first-person plurals, which makes it somewhat difficult to tell who the narrator is, and even harder to find who s/he is addressing. The ending implies that the narrator is the Scythian, speaking about herself and the player.
 * Anti-Poopsocking: The player is encouraged to take a break between sessions, and obtaining the latter two Trigons takes at least two weeks because they can only be found during the new and full moon.
 * Carl Jung: Heavily referenced, especially by the Archetype.
 * In the credits, his Red Book is mentioned as being obliquely referenced within the game.
 * The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Sure, you can just adjust your computer/iOS calendar instead of waiting for the appropriate real-world lunar phases, but if you do you can't get One Hundred Percent Completion.
 * Dream Land: The Scythian travels to dream land to recover the last two Trigons, which effectively means half the game takes place in it.
 * Gainax Ending:
 * Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The game is split into four "sessions".
 * Incurable Cough of Death:
 * Interactive Narrator: One possible way to describe the Archetype, the man who is supposedly putting the player through the "S&S Therapy."
 * Magic Music: A significant part of the game. The vinyl record, presumably the titular "Sword & Sworcery EP" itself, seems to represent reality.
 * The record also reflects the game's use of a dream land reality. The real world is Side A, the dream world is Side B.
 * Mushroom Samba: Functions as the hint system. The mushrooms also heal you.
 * Minimalist Cast
 * No Name Given: The heroine is simply the "Scythian," the woodcutter is "Logfella," the dog is "Dogfella," and the shepherdess is "Girl."
 * The Power of Rock:
 * Retraux: The graphics are intentionally pixel-looking.
 * Scenery Porn: The gorgeous pixelated landscapes are often touted as one of the strongest points of the game.
 * Shout-Out: One of the lands frequently referenced is Cimmeria.
 * Trigon Trifecta = Triforce upside down
 * There are a few Twin Peaks references as well
 * Sinister Geometry: The Trigon Trifecta, a triplet of upside-down triangles which must be fought and tamed. Almost everything else in the game is done in a retro pixellated style, but the trigons are perfect triangles, which adds to the sense of their otherworldliness.
 * This also applies to the giant vinyl record and the fog that makes up the Gogolithic Mass. The latter for the same reason as the Trigons, the former to emphasize its position as being in a slightly higher reality than the game, since it actuall contains the game.
 * Tennis Boss: The first phase of taming a Trigon. In an interesting subversion, the balls don't become progressively faster when they're hit. Instead, after being hit a certain number of times they speed up once, and then dissapear completely after taking the same number of hits again.
 * Totally Radical: The game makes extensive use of slang such as "AMIRITE?"
 * Twitter: Many events in the game can be twittered, there are nestboxes that can be used to tweet, and the hint system is also clearly based on it.