Sword & Sworcery EP
2011

The advent of Apple's iOS ecosystem created a broad new possibility space for videogame design, and a noted cult classic in this space was 2011's Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, a future-facing adventure videogame rooted in a mythic past. The project was a showcase for lush woodland landscapes and peculiarly abstracted people and creatures presented with the distinct painterly approach to pixels established over the years by illustrator/creator Superbrothers. Players were invited to guide a wandering warrior monk known the Scythian into the woods, up a mountain, into a dark dungeon and beyond into a rambling shadowy adventure involving dreams, miracles and cryptozoology. As the story progresses the player must push The Scythian to overcome occasional opponents and obstacles despite a deteriorating physical and mental condition in order to reach a strange, complicated, cosmic finale.

Individual trees are Pitfall-like in their simplicity, but taken together the dense, blocky foliage evoke pointilist pastorals. Occasional non-pixel elements - a smoothly gradated sky, soft clouds, clean trigons and a crisp crescent moon - are introduced intentionally. Careful consideration is paid to mood and aesthetics, color palettes of deep forest blues and greens and skies of purple evolve in step with segments of the intentionally forgerounded musical compositions. The project was further distinguished from the videogames of years past with its self aware Twitter-compatible dialogue snippets.

Following its release the project was met with broad critical acclaim, it was selected by Apple as one of five "landmark" videogames in the first five years of the App Store and it was listed in the top 10 videogames of 2011 according to Time Magazine. The release was accompanied by a full length album by Jim Guthrie titled Sword & Sworcery LP: The Ballad of the Space Babies.

Superbrothers was founded in Toronto by illustrator and videogame creator Craig D. Adams in 2003. His artistic influences include Cezanne, Klimt, Hokusai and Hiroshige, comic creator Mike Mignola, as well as the videogames of Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo, and early cinema-inspired videogames including Eric Chahi’s Out of This World and Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia. After studying illustration and videogame design at art schools in and around Toronto, Adams worked for a Japanese videogame company as a concept artist and designer while evolving the Superbrothers style in illustrations for magazines and newspapers and in tiny animated musical films. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery features art, concepts and design from Adams, the project was co-created with Toronto videogame studio Capy and it prominently features music from composer Jim Guthrie. Adams currently lives and works in the woods of Quebec where a new as-yet-unnanounced Superbrothers project is slowly taking shape.

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