Yes, I am one of those thousands of people who played Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP on the iPad. And all the good things you here about it, they are all true: This really is a milestone for independent gaming and for touchscreen interfaces as well. On Thursday, April 21 (yes, tomorrow!) this game will be published for iPhones, the system it was originally designed for. If you do not know what I talk about, see the Sword & Sworcery site, or this review by Rob Dubbin.

There is already a lot of people saying smart things about this game. I only would like to pick some points:

The Art

The audiovisual style is the center piece of the whole phenomenon. Pixels and 8-Bit graphics are nothing new, but Superbrothers brought it to a new level: They dared to combine blocky pixels with smooth vectors and gradients. Most of the game world and the characters are pixelish, but the moon, interface graphics etc. are high-res. Beautiful graphics, sounds and music throughout create a very special atmosphere.

The Hype

Superbrothers not only produced a wonderful game. In fact, the release of the actual game for iPad has just happened some weeks ago. But they managed to stir a hype for over a year before, and thereby create an excited and growing audience. They did that by giving out snippets of artwork, video, music together with their own style of writing and linking to video game related material. They used Twitter and Facebook to the fully extent and they published an awesome HTML newsletter called Teletext. The later is especially a work of art of its own and the only newsletter I can remember ever looking forward to.

The Team

Sword & Sworcery EP is an independent effort, far different from the usual video game industry big names with hundreds of people involved. This game is the work of only three or four people. One art director and designer, one programmer, one musician and sound artist. It is a result of the vision of only a few people. You can see it in the consistency of the art. The game and its ecosphere is so coherent, it all feels like one voice. This is why following Superbrothers was and is such a pleasant experience. This is something special and I can think of no other game that feels like this.

Get it

The bottom line: If you are even vaguely interested in independent gaming at all and have one of Apple‘s touch devices, get this game. It‘s history in the making.