Pyre burns up the scene
Supergiant Games’ new offering this year presents familiar elements dressed over a new, unique system of gaming. Run, jump, teleport and make the goal as you progress through a story and game rivaling AAA games
Supergiant Games are on a bit of a roll. They began with the excellent Bastion, which I’ve already spoken about in this column. They followed it up with Transistor, which was a lovely game in its own right. With a pedigree like that, you can understand why there was a lot of excitement when they announced ‘Pyre’.
Well, Pyre’s finally out and have they managed to pull it off again?
The story of Pyre is a tricky one to unpack without giving away too much. Suffice it to say that you play a Reader (one who is literate) who is exiled into the wastelands and is picked up by a group of other exiles. Together, you set about trying to complete the mysterious Rites that could bring your exile to an end if you win.
So far, so normal — that’s a pretty standard setup for an RPG, isn’t it? And there’s definitely a lot of RPG DNA in Pyre — from the conversations you can have with the other members of your rag-tag group, to the choices and decisions that can have a lasting impact on relationships and your chances of success, to spending time honing a character’s skillset and giving them better equipment to turn them into a specialised titan of their art. Sound familiar? Good, because it’s at this point that Pyre throws the playbook right out the window.
You see, the Rites that you and your group will tackle aren’t quests so much as they’re...a championship of sorts. You aren’t adventuring — you’re essentially playing a sport. A sport that’s an amalgam of elements of football, rugby and ‘Capture the Flag’ — and at this point, you probably already know whether Pyre’s a game for you or not.
Here’s what’s going on — teams of three face off against each other in a variety of arenas. Each team has a pyre at ‘their’ end of the field. An orb drops into the centre of the field at the beginning of the match (and at every ‘kickoff’) and your goal is to get one of your players to pick up the orb and either throw or run it into your opponent’s pyre. Couple of problems, though — only one member of your team can move at any time, and if you get too close to an opponent their ‘aura’ will banish you (meaning that that character will take some time to respawn). There are layers upon layers here — characters can project their auras like ranged weapons, some can fly, some can teleport, some are great on defense and so on — but that’s the gist.
I was blown away by Pyre. It’s so unexpected, more reminiscent of something like Rocket League than Bastion, but it’s so good. It hardly needs to be said, given who made it, but it’s also a beautiful game, with gorgeous visuals and audio — better than some AAA games. There’s more going on with the story as well that I don’t feel qualified to comment on just yet, but this is a gem of a game and you should give it a shot.