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This was part of a Humble Android Bundle I got years and years ago, and it's nice to have done something about it at long last. Its very presence in my phone's game list has been haunting me this whole time. It's a rather large file in my phone's storage, the app's insistence on calling itself "#sworcery" (complete with hashtag) messes up my alphabetical folder sorting, and seeing it there always reminds me that oh yeah I still need to play it someday huh. For these reasons, I am definitely breathing a sigh of relief to be done with it as I write this.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is an... um... hmm. Well, it's definitely a thing. Wikipedia calls it an Adventure game, which I guess is true? But only because that label has been stretched so far beyond recognition that it really doesn't mean anything anymore. This isn't a Sierra/LucasArts/Infocom Adventure by any stretch of the imagination. It's... it's what kids these days think "Adventure" means, I guess. I honestly don't know what else you would call this.
There's layers of possibly game-within-a-game framework with a whole bunch of weird stuff I'll touch on shortly. At its deepest layer, you control the Scythian, a nomadic warrior-monk type who must complete a Woeful Errand. Point and click/touchscreen to walk around. There's a timing-based block-and-counter style combat system which is actually pretty cool, though fighting the same enemies can get a repetitive near the end. Some puzzles are a bit too clever for their own good and require a walkthrough because they hinge on weird interface nonsense that you forgot your phone was even capable of doing because no one ever needs or expects it to do that. (I haven't played, but to those of you who were complaining about this to me and thus and gave me the reference point, you guys can apparently say this game has a case of Hotel Dusk syndrome.)
The plot at its deepest layer is straightforward enough: the Scythian needs to gather all the MacGuffins to complete her Woeful Errand, despite the fact that doing so seems to take a toll on her. Not the deepest plot ever written, but when you add in lush and gorgeous pixel graphics and a well-done soundtrack, it's solid.
It gets weird when it zooms out a bit, though. There's this mysterious overseer-type figure in a business suit named the Archetype who addresses You The Player and is making you play "sessions" (chapters/acts) of the Scythian's story as if they were some sort of therapy treatment and/or scientific experiment. The Archetype is also a presence in the Scythian's story, though, and talks to and mentors her... sort of? There's a giant floating record in the sky which I guess must be the titular Sword & Sworcery EP but that is never explained or even mentioned by anyone (not even the Archetype,) like You The Player are the only person who ever sees or notices it. Almost every line of dialog in the game comes with a "Tweet This?" button which I never pressed because hahaha fuck youuuu. (I can't help but notice "Don't worry, we cut Twitter" is a proudly-proclaimed actual selling point of the Switch version.)
The dialog itself lives in a weird liminal space between serious plot-heavy mysticism and fourth wall detached irony. There are lines like "You have awakened the deathless specter that sleeps beneath Mingi Taw. What a creep, amirite?" and "In my dream-walking there is a special place I will always go, a parliament of trees at the heart of the world. In my special place I visit with a titanic hollow tree... she is a goddess long-since dead who predates mankind by untold eons. Of course I never tell people about these goddess/tree dreams because they'll probably just call me a hippie or something."
It's an experimental style, and I'll give them credit for trying it. I'll even acknowledge that there are people out there who would love that kind of delivery. I don't think it really worked for my personal tastes, though. To me, this whole game feels like they had the Scythian's story but they lacked confidence in it (which, to be fair, it is kind of an RPGMaker-tier plot if you take out all the dressing.) Rather than polish, refine, and build upon it until they had something they could sell from that alone, they took the rough outline of the Scythian stuff, hung some fourth wall stuff and hipsterism around it, and hoped they could pass the whole thing off as Art.
Things like that goddess/tree speech feel like they had some deep and serious plot threads going there, but the writers were worried the player might not care, so they threw in that last sentence to deflect the mood because LOL. It's a very kidding-on-the-square approach, where it kind of wants you to be invested in the Scythian's tale (I think?) but it trips over itself loudly declaring the narrative equivalent of "No homo, though" every other line just in case you're not. I was, but that just made the experience frustrating, because I felt like I wanted to take this story seriously but the game wasn't letting me.
Also, the hipster stuff is all cagey mysteriousness that never gets explained. I hope you're not playing this expecting some sort of answer who the Archetype is, or what this "treatment" is all about, or that record, or... why any of this, really. Why is this even called Superbrothers? This game doesn't have any brothers in it.
In short, there's a lot here I'll never understand, and probably a lot here where I'm giving them way too much credit by assuming there's a deeper reason to understand. You can just say "Why? Because artsy indie bullshit is just like that sometimes" and that probably covers a lot of my lingering questions.
That said, I did enjoy it enough to beat it, and I don't regret doing so. Even not counting the "There, now I can get it off my phone" factor, it's certainly a neat experience. It's musically and visually gorgeous. The plot underneath it all is... not terrible? The combat is unique and worth experiencing, and some of the interface puzzles are really clever. (I mean they all are, but some are just too clever.) Definitely not bad for a bundle acquisition, and an... um... "If that's your thing and this looks good to you, then sure" recommendation, I guess.
Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is an... um... hmm. Well, it's definitely a thing. Wikipedia calls it an Adventure game, which I guess is true? But only because that label has been stretched so far beyond recognition that it really doesn't mean anything anymore. This isn't a Sierra/LucasArts/Infocom Adventure by any stretch of the imagination. It's... it's what kids these days think "Adventure" means, I guess. I honestly don't know what else you would call this.
There's layers of possibly game-within-a-game framework with a whole bunch of weird stuff I'll touch on shortly. At its deepest layer, you control the Scythian, a nomadic warrior-monk type who must complete a Woeful Errand. Point and click/touchscreen to walk around. There's a timing-based block-and-counter style combat system which is actually pretty cool, though fighting the same enemies can get a repetitive near the end. Some puzzles are a bit too clever for their own good and require a walkthrough because they hinge on weird interface nonsense that you forgot your phone was even capable of doing because no one ever needs or expects it to do that. (I haven't played, but to those of you who were complaining about this to me and thus and gave me the reference point, you guys can apparently say this game has a case of Hotel Dusk syndrome.)
The plot at its deepest layer is straightforward enough: the Scythian needs to gather all the MacGuffins to complete her Woeful Errand, despite the fact that doing so seems to take a toll on her. Not the deepest plot ever written, but when you add in lush and gorgeous pixel graphics and a well-done soundtrack, it's solid.
It gets weird when it zooms out a bit, though. There's this mysterious overseer-type figure in a business suit named the Archetype who addresses You The Player and is making you play "sessions" (chapters/acts) of the Scythian's story as if they were some sort of therapy treatment and/or scientific experiment. The Archetype is also a presence in the Scythian's story, though, and talks to and mentors her... sort of? There's a giant floating record in the sky which I guess must be the titular Sword & Sworcery EP but that is never explained or even mentioned by anyone (not even the Archetype,) like You The Player are the only person who ever sees or notices it. Almost every line of dialog in the game comes with a "Tweet This?" button which I never pressed because hahaha fuck youuuu. (I can't help but notice "Don't worry, we cut Twitter" is a proudly-proclaimed actual selling point of the Switch version.)
The dialog itself lives in a weird liminal space between serious plot-heavy mysticism and fourth wall detached irony. There are lines like "You have awakened the deathless specter that sleeps beneath Mingi Taw. What a creep, amirite?" and "In my dream-walking there is a special place I will always go, a parliament of trees at the heart of the world. In my special place I visit with a titanic hollow tree... she is a goddess long-since dead who predates mankind by untold eons. Of course I never tell people about these goddess/tree dreams because they'll probably just call me a hippie or something."
It's an experimental style, and I'll give them credit for trying it. I'll even acknowledge that there are people out there who would love that kind of delivery. I don't think it really worked for my personal tastes, though. To me, this whole game feels like they had the Scythian's story but they lacked confidence in it (which, to be fair, it is kind of an RPGMaker-tier plot if you take out all the dressing.) Rather than polish, refine, and build upon it until they had something they could sell from that alone, they took the rough outline of the Scythian stuff, hung some fourth wall stuff and hipsterism around it, and hoped they could pass the whole thing off as Art.
Things like that goddess/tree speech feel like they had some deep and serious plot threads going there, but the writers were worried the player might not care, so they threw in that last sentence to deflect the mood because LOL. It's a very kidding-on-the-square approach, where it kind of wants you to be invested in the Scythian's tale (I think?) but it trips over itself loudly declaring the narrative equivalent of "No homo, though" every other line just in case you're not. I was, but that just made the experience frustrating, because I felt like I wanted to take this story seriously but the game wasn't letting me.
Also, the hipster stuff is all cagey mysteriousness that never gets explained. I hope you're not playing this expecting some sort of answer who the Archetype is, or what this "treatment" is all about, or that record, or... why any of this, really. Why is this even called Superbrothers? This game doesn't have any brothers in it.
In short, there's a lot here I'll never understand, and probably a lot here where I'm giving them way too much credit by assuming there's a deeper reason to understand. You can just say "Why? Because artsy indie bullshit is just like that sometimes" and that probably covers a lot of my lingering questions.
That said, I did enjoy it enough to beat it, and I don't regret doing so. Even not counting the "There, now I can get it off my phone" factor, it's certainly a neat experience. It's musically and visually gorgeous. The plot underneath it all is... not terrible? The combat is unique and worth experiencing, and some of the interface puzzles are really clever. (I mean they all are, but some are just too clever.) Definitely not bad for a bundle acquisition, and an... um... "If that's your thing and this looks good to you, then sure" recommendation, I guess.