First thoughts on #sworcery, session 1 (it's sword and sorcery FFS)


Possible minor spoilers! (not that there's much story to spoil)

First, the why of it. I don't normally play mobile games, small screen, small device, and just not my cup of tea, but I tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/tjbierschbach/status/583685042829991938

and someone else tweeted this:

https://twitter.com/TheWhaler_/status/583695044097499136

and several other things, and even though I wasn't criticizing the game, I took up the challenge, don't knock it before you try it. So my first tweet being a criticism of the lack of consistent message from the fail game press really has nothing to do with this, but more me wanting to be informed about whether the main character of #sworcery is a strong female character, and why she gets promoted as such when Samus fraking Aran is pegged as not mainstream enough to be a good example of a strong female character.

So, I got the game, made room for it on my phone, and played session 1 and here's what I got so far. I may do a full review of the game on fragsandbeer.com if I can manage to make myself play through it.

Gameplay:
Gameplay is much like any other mobile game I've played, utilizing the touch screen. It's not intuitive for me, but it didn't take long to get the hang of it. I imagine other people who play mobile games a lot may find it quite easy to figure out, I needed the prompts.

The combat, of which there was one scene in session 1, was boring. Thankfully there was only two. It's simply a combination of timing shield to block when the wolf acts like it's going to attack and wildly hitting the sword icon the rest of the time. I wasn't even hitting the wolf and eventually he went away. I'm not sure if that was supposed to happen.

Near the end of session 1, when I thought I was supposed to fight, I realized I wasn't and finally moved out of there. It was a frustrating few deaths before I realized it wasn't the poor combat mechanic that was causing me to die but the fact I was supposed to run away. The last combat scene I actually hit the enemy, but by then I'd figured out the timing thing (after the first fight) and it was even more boring, we'll see what the future holds.

Graphics:
What can I say, I hope they are intentionally going for bad pixel graphics. I've seen mobile games with better graphics, hell I've seen Atari games with better. I'm going to assume that the style is intentional, and if so, they did it fine. The backgrounds had a lot going on, and there was a 3D element to the foreground and background, as well as getting trees and bushes to move if you tapped them. I suppose, for what they were going for, it was good, just not the style I prefer in games.

The main character, I guess, is female, but if that was supposed to be apparent I missed it. If I had not already heard it on Twitter, and confirmed it on the game's wiki page, I wouldn't have known. No name is given, no feminine pronoun is used, so in this case the graphics did a terrible job of conveying the character's appearance. Was this intentional? Maybe, I don't know. The only indicator I got, was that when hit, or lifting a heavy object, there was a distinct high-pitched gasp/moan but it could have also been a young boy. We'll see if later levels indicate gender at all. Why is this important? You'll see later.

Music:
Yah...with all due respect to Jim Guthrie, session 1's music is bad. It's repetitive in the extreme, annoying in most parts, and all together distracting. I don't know what else to say, I just didn't care for it.

Writing (dialogue/thoughts):
I absolutely did not get the plural personal pronouns. "We did this", "We felt that". Was the main character including the dog in all that? Most people don't do that, if you don't know the dog's thoughts it's "Sparky and I." Maybe the "We" was the main character and me, but usually the player assumes the role of the main character so not sure if that was it either.

I was also completely thrown off by the modern jargon. Things like "Jazzed", "What's up with that", and "move it move it." There were many others but those were the main ones that dragged me right out of whatever story they were trying to tell. Was the character from the future? Do they just talk in pop culture idioms in whatever world the game is set in? It was entirely immersion breaking.

Writing (story):
So far the extent of the story is what you get in the thought bubbles as you go. In fact, you get to a point where an NPC, Lonfella (yah...Longfella, the other NPC so far is called Girl) knows about 'our errand' before we even do. I'm not sure if I missed something, but I clicked through all of the intro text and read it and I got no back story, no why. Why was the character there, what purpose, what had they been doing up until then? You start on a block, and a dog leads you away.

And finally, what sparked this in the first place; is she actually a strong female character?
So far...no. I didn't even know, based on the game itself, that the main character is a woman. We don't know why she's on the quest, or what the quest is. We don't know what's up with the dog, where she got her sword, or why she speaks like she's a group of people. We don't know where she is from, or what she used to do, or even why she decided to become an adventurer, if that's even what she is. We have no basis at all to judge whether this is a strong character, much less a strong female. No personality, no quirks, no strengths or weaknesses. Maybe if I can play through the other three sessions I might find something that seems to have sparked people like Anita Sarkeesian to claim this is a good example, but so far no go.

Final thought, it's not a terrible game, but it's not good. It's what I would expect from a cheap mobile game I guess, but it didn't even hook me as much as Star Wars Angry Birds did, and even that got old after awhile. The only way I could recommend this game is to see what all the fuss is about, but so far I wouldn't say anyone should buy it for the sake of having a good time. I might change my mind as I get through the rest of it, but with games first impressions are everything. I spend a lot of time gaming and I have a lot of games I like to play. If I'm going to devote my precious time to something it needs to be worth it.

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