iPad (iPhone and iPod touch versions coming soon) – £2.99
Rating: *****
What’s the iPad for? This question did the rounds quite a bit before Apple’s newest toy was released last year, and for some it’s never really been answered. Big iPhone? Wanky status symbol (the status being ‘I’m the sort of person who would use gold leaf for toilet paper, given the chance’)? On-the-go productivity centre and mobile internet whizzbang gaming video toy?
Most iPad owners would probably pick option three – me included. I blog, tweet, work and surf on my iPad, but until recently I’d not really used it for gaming. Then someone told me to download Sword & Sworcery; now I’m hooked, and just a few hours away from calling in sick to spend more time with it.
Similar in appearance to classic point-and-click adventures like Beneath a Steel Sky – complete with blocky sprites and dodgy dialogue – Superbrothers’ Sword & Sworcery EP (S:S&S, as the game’s developers call it) is probably the most immersive iPad game since Angry Birds. You control a character, the Scythian, who must assemble a mythical ‘Trigon’ – a pyramid-like magical force thingumy that will restore peace to the land. It’s all rendered in pleasingly nostalgic 8-bit graphics, backed with dreamily wonderful music (courtesy of Canadian singer-songwriter Jim Guthrie), and laden with plenty of wry nods towards the consoles and games of old.
So far, so Zelda. But what makes S:S&S so immersive is that it brings that retro experience in to a decidedly modern setting. Alongside the Atari ST-style blocky graphics, the game includes plenty of crisp, high-def graphics and tilt-turn controls, taking full advantage of the iPad’s features. It also takes gaming on to social networks, giving you the option to tweet lines of dialogue from your account, including a #sworcery hashtag to link you to other gamers. It’s an oddly comradely experience – if, perhaps, a bit annoying for those who wonder what all the strange tweets are about.
All in all, it’s an excellent download, and certainly worth the £2.99 tag. However, it comes with a health warning: don’t download this game if you can’t manage a good work-life balance. It’s remarkably addictive, with its soundtrack alone enough to keep you plugged in and listening when you should probably be completing that PowerPoint presentation or reading your textbooks. A clever, intuitive and deliciously ironic game, Sword & Sworcery brings point-and-click firmly into the 21st century. As its characters say, perhaps a little too often: awesome.
Sword & Sworcery is available for £2.99 from the Apple App Store. For more information and video previews, visit the app’s official website.
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