sworcery symbology, yuletide edition by Cory Schmitz
STUMBLING REVERENTLY INTO 2023
Hey, Craig from Superbrothers here. As 2022 winds down I sincerely hope that wherever you are, you’re getting through things okay, whatever the odds and the obstacles, and that you’ve got it in you to be who you want to be, and be good to each other, as we all stumble reverently forward into another year living together on this troubled, miraculous planet.
So, listen: I've prepared a hefty post for you to enjoy over the winter holidays. it's about how I moved from #sworcery's pixels to JETT's polygons, and why JETT took the shape it did, with mentions of Metroid, Metroid Prime and Fumito Ueda, among others. I hope you enjoy it, if you take the time to traverse it.
This one's a long read, a big ol' yule log of a post. If you're interested in the process of creating videogames, and the specific and maybe-unusual Superbrothers A/V approach, then perhaps you'll consider returning to this post at some point over the winter holidays in a an idle moment, with a mug of warm cocoa in hand.
#sworcery fan art from the AV jam
FROM PIXELS TO POLYGONS
First off, a question: d'you happen to remember the #sworcery AV Jam, that eruption of fan-made sworcery-inspired art that we collected on tumblr back in April 2012? There are some legit gems in that mix: https://sworcery-vibes.tumblr.com/
There's an image that dates back to this time that I wanted to mention. It's a painting I had made for a Moon Grotto music release, depicting The Scythian's < spoiler alert > funeral pyre.
When I painted the pixels for this scene in #sworcery, I'll admit I got a bit choked up. It was strangely moving to be laying The Scythian down to rest so soon after getting to know her. Then, a year later, I revisited the scene with a tablet in Photoshop. This time time I was taking my leave of sworcery's pixel style, and I was contemplating how to go about mounting a videogame production involving 3D characters and locations. This was a daunting prospect, given the depth of my experience at the time, and given the tiny-team-size constraint I thought it prudent to work within.
Early on after my move from Toronto to the woods of Quebec, starting in 2013, I set to work sketching and building up the foundation and conceptual scaffolding for a dream project called 'the future'. I was reading up on science fiction (revisiting Dune, Clarke's The Deep Sea, Asimov's Foundation, LeGuin's Vaster Than Empires...) as well as relevant science and space race history books. Meanwhile, my old pal and JETT's co-creator Patrick at Pine Scented in Japan was in touch, getting his life to a place where he was ready to commit to build something together with me.
Common sense suggests that one shouldn't attempt to go from 'scope-limited 2D mobile game' (sworcery) to 'vast 3D PS5 videogame with unorthodox immersive sim elements and characters emoting and speaking' (JETT). Both Patrick and I knew we would have to learn a whole lot to actually deliver on the kind of maximalist vision we were cooking up with JETT, and we knew it would take a great deal of time and effort, and you know what, we were right, haha.
All's well that ends well, as they say, and now, ten years later, we're on the home stretch JETT-wise with Given Time, the upcoming free expansion to JETT that'll be 'alighting' early in 2023 alongside the Steam release. It feels great to be rounding this corner.
Given all that, now feels a good time to broadcast some thoughts about JETT's gameplay design and what inspired it, including mentions of Metroid Prime, Monster Hunter and the videogames of Fumito Ueda.
Before we dig in, I should ask: if you haven't already, and if you like this kind of thing, then please do go wishlist JETT: The Far Shore + Given Time. Take the demo for a spin, and stay tuned for more: the Steam launch and the free expansion are
JETT'S DESIGN INSPIRATIONS
A LOOK AT JETT GAMEPLAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5v4vEqmgQ0
The most efficient way to get you up to speed on JETT's final design is to direct you to this two minute clip from 2021, where I explain some things about how The Far Shore plays.
As that clip demonstrates, JETT's gameplay is an unorthodox thing, with chunks of walking around and absorbing moods and narrative concepts, in-between chunky jett-centric gameplay where you're snowboarding around and solving a series of scenarios that involve exploring, inspecting things, poking and prodding at things, then using the jett's tools and applying some problem-solving to survive and persevere.
As for how JETT's vision took the shape it did, and what we were aspiring for: read on!
THE 90S 3D MOTION HEYDAY
For me, an inspiration for JETT's gameplay is how fun 3D motion can be, outside of the context of controlling a person walking around on-foot.
In the 90s, when 3D motion was new and novel, there were so many great videogames with unusual approaches to surfing, flying and racing.
I loved Magic Carpet, TIE Fighter, Descent and so on when they emerged into the 90s PC scene. On console I was there to play WipeOut, F-Zero X, Waverace and the various snowboarding and future racing games of the era.
In those olden times there was a fair bit of originality and exploration in this genre space, and it felt like there was a decent-sized audience playing them. Then, in the 2000s, as that novelty began to wear off, the audiences seemed to diminished and there was perhaps a bit less going on in that genre-space. The racing, skating and snowboarding games that did emerge weren't taking as many wild swings.
3D MOTION VIDEOGAMES IN THE 2000s
Thatgamecompany's fl0wer had a feel that was an occasional reference point for us on JETT (eg. see 'hopping on ghokebloom').
Also, I should note I've been pretty inspired by many a racing game over the years, notably Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, a game I revere, whose aesthetics and engine cool-down mechanics directly inspired JETT's scramjet stability system.
MY FIRST VIDEOGAME INDUSTRY GIG
In the mid-2000s I had completed my studies in illustration and 3-D videogame art production, and I took a job at a Japanese videogame studio in downtown Toronto (odd, but true), on a future racing title called Fatal Inertia EX, set in natural landscapes, built using the then-new Unreal Engine 3. I joined that project late, but I ended up chipping in on a variety of elements including skies, lighting, sound, and even trailer capture/editing and pitching on art direction. It was a cool time and an excellent learning opportunity.
I met Patrick at Pine Scented at this time, and because we were sometimes tooling around these in-game locations in-editor, we'd experience these rich environments outside the confines of a race, where you're required to careen around in circles.
BABY JETT
Flash forward a few more years, right after #sworcery in 2011, and Patrick and reconvened at the Toronto Game Jam to gin something up to scratch a videogame design itch. Patrick has a great #JETTdev Twitter thread that begins there.
Even after only a couple days of work on the weekend of the jam, we could see there was something here that we were pretty intrigued by.
We had a tone, a style and a feeling of motion that we liked and that we were intrigued by. We found that we were interested in creating something substantial enough to interest people for a long period of time, so others could enjoy the experience we were having playing around and getting good.
THE FAR SHORE'S NARRATIVE CONCEPTS
Early on it occurred to us that our design aims would be perhaps best served by narrative concepts that would have us taking our first steps exploring an unfamiliar planet, a planet where we could invent creatures and entities to serve our gameplay vision and have our in-game characters be encountering them for the first time.
I started to imagine how this concept might look and feel, and how it might have interesting and meaningful ideas woven in, and I puzzled over how a team of two people might go about building something like this out. In conversation with Patrick, who handled all the technical aspects and co-authored the design with me for years, and we began to carve out prototypes to scope out relevant concepts.
THE INFLUENCE OF METROID PRIME, MONSTER HUNTER AND FUMITO UEDA
METROID PRIME
As for the kinds of videogames we were talking about in those early days, well, we invoked the Metroid Prime series a reference more than once, I can safely say.
I love Metroid Prime - what an outstanding collection of moods and seamless vibes! It was so cool to inhabit Samus Aran's attitude, a calm and tenacious problem-solver, while discovering and incrementally disentangling initially puzzling locations and scenarios. When Metroid Prime is in its stride you're purposefully hiking from location to location, fluidly using tools to traverse spaces and overcome obstacles, pausing to better understand some detail, peering at some mystery to uncover what's hidden, gleaning some insight from an onboard computer, and then occasionally you find yourself suddenly spat out into some spectacular trouble when a boss battle erupts around you. There was plenty for us to aspire to there!
We were only two people so we had to have a strategy on how we might deliver on some of this with JETT. For example: we opted to put you into the snug space boots of JETT's silent protagonist, Mei, letting you walk around in first person, to immersively inhabit that experience and understand the world from that perspective, but we kept a hard limit on gameplay complexity for these onfoot sections, keeping the focus on mood and narrative. That way we could keep our action and gameplay centered on the jett, a simpler rig that would give us everything we were after.
While I love and appreciate the Metroid Prime series, I'll admit that there's not much about the writing in the series that intrigued me, and that's fine, that's not where it's coming from. However, this, too, was an inspiration JETT-wise. I was eager to carve out an appealing science fiction world, and to populate it with characters that players could connect to, who are living an interesting story. My calculation was that connecting with players on these levels could deepen the vibe.
I love a lot of where we ended up with JETT's narrative concepts, but I'll admit that in The Far Shore campaign, our focus on story and character sometimes trips up the mood... which is why I'm so thrilled about the Given Time campaign, which is where JETT's Metroid Prime-inspired design really shines, as a tried-and-tested Mei arises from torpor and sets out on a free-roaming adventure in a quiet vibes-heavy world, relying on her tools and her wits to figure things out.
MONSTER HUNTER
Another series that we talked about a fair bit in those early days was Monster Hunter.
The Monster Hunter series has you encountering large creatures that you'll end up learning the ways of. You're tasked with getting familiar with the tools, ecosystems and rhythms of the world in order to survive and thrive. There are a ton of doodads and complexity, and plenty of repetition, and some things are fussy and awkward and inscrutable, but there was so much else to be inspired by with this series.
There are ways in which Monster Hunter's appeal overlaps with Metroid Prime, but Monster Hunter is a broader and deeper design, where the various elements relate to each other in complex ways, and there's much more variability in how things play out.
It can be such a thrill to go out into a large natural landscape, gathering and preparing for what's to come, then seeking out a particular creature, observing its behavior and deciding on an approach, then dealing with that creature in a series of encounters, putting your knowledge and skills into practice, duking it out over a prolonged period of time, often with lulls and breaks in-between altercations.
Of course, with Monster Hunter you're constantly slaying these creatures and harvesting their corpses to build new weapons and armor, and while these are core and satisfying aspects of Monster Hunter's design, we actually took pains to avoid relying on these mechanics with JETT. Our interest was in zipping around in the vicinity of large, interesting creatures, getting in and out of trouble with them, using our jett skills and tools to defend or outrun or problem solve while we pursue goals not rooted in belligerence. In order to keep JETT's science fiction tone and concepts intact, and to keep the characters from becoming heels, we found we had to look for the high road and avoid clumsily trampling indigenous flora and fauna underfoot.
As for the jett's locomotion and controls, well, they're admittedly a bit unorthodox, and some of the DNA there goes to the Monster Hunter series, which is also an acquired taste for some. For example, in JETT you'll often be 'toggling scramjets on/off', which feels a bit like sheathing and unsheathing a weapon in Monster Hunter. In JETT, with scramjets toggled on you'll zip along at a steady cruising speed, perfect for traversing the world while looking around. Then you'll come across a location of interest and you'll toggle scramjets off, so you can go as slow as you like, letting you use the jett's various tools -- resonator, light, grapple -- to understand and manipulate entities in the world. Then oops, something comes up and it's time to hit the road, so you toggle those scramjets on and get up to speed. It's a mode-switch, or a gear-change, and it's unusual, but just like Monster Hunter's sheathe/unsheathe mechanic, once you've grokked it, it makes a lot of sense and starts to feel pretty cool.
THE VIDEOGAMES OF FUMITO UEDA
In 2001, Fumito Ueda and SCEJ's Ico was released, and it had a tone all its own, similar only to Eric Chahi's Another World or Heart of Darkness. In some ways it felt like an indie acoustic cover of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarinia of Time, with a plucky young hero saving a princess from a fairy tale castle, but with all the cute kid stuff pulled out. Playing it felt like looking through a window into a world, with living people running about, people with hearts and souls.
It's fascinating to think of how Hidetaka Miyazaki, then a 29 year old systems admin at Oracle, was inspired by Ico to pursue a career in videogame development. I can feel some of Ueda's peculiar magic lurking in the corners of Miyazaki's design sensibility, that inscrutable remoteness and austerity that suffuses Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and so on to Elden Ring.
It was such a thrill to play Ico, and it was validating in a way. Here was someone else who could see what videogames could be, and they got this made, and it's excellent. Incidentally, the day I played Ico was the day I warmed up to PlayStation, and it has been a thrill to work with the fine folks at that legendary company on JETT.
When Shadow of the Colossus hit in 2005 I was living in a place in Toronto with my old pal (and The Long Dark concept artist) Roberto Robert, and we happened to have a projector on-hand, and a slanted roof in our living room, and let me tell you: that was a pretty ideal venue. We were maximally hyped, and Shadow pretty much floored us. So many memorable encounters, such a mood.
For Patrick and I, in the early days of JETT, we had the vibe of Fumito Ueda's games in mind thorughout: that forlorn beauty, those feelings of regret and the emotional heft of things, the awe that comes with sighting a colossus, the intrigue that comes from observing an intricate world with it's own inscrutable logic.
a pic from a 2012 Japan trip
Speaking of Ueda, here's a maybe-amusing aside...
Around the summer solstice in 2012, I found myself in Japan, alongside #sworcery co-lead designer Kris Piotrowski. We were in town because the excellent people at 8-4 Ltd had prepared a Japanese edition of #sworcery, as well as a star-studded remix album, and they had lined up launch events involving various industry legends. Suda51, who voiced Logfella in the Japanese edition of #sworcery, was the MC of our launch event, which was attended by the likes of Koji Igarashi (Castlevania), Chip Tanaka (Metroid), and many more.
Among the many highlights of this too-good-to-be-true trip was a sit-down supper with none other than the great Fumito Ueda, who wore a Delphine Software t-shirt of his own making. It was an excellent time, with Kris and I answering many questions through a translate about how #sworcery came to be and so on, while we peppered him with questions about his career and inspirations.
This was 2012, and at that time the status of The Last Guardian was not known. Out of politeness, neither Kris nor I mentioned the project, in case it was a sore spot. However, as we said our farewells, Ueda said 'please look forward to The Last Guardian', and Kris and I responded enthusiastically.
Then, as Kris and I awaited our train, we found ourselves reflecting on the passage of time. At that time in 2012 it had been seven years since Ueda's Shadow of the Colossus, and for us young'uns that felt like a lifetime. "Can you imagine working on a game for seven years?" we asked ourselves. "What must that be like?"
The joke here is that Kris would go on to put well over seven years into Below, and for me with JETT it looks like I'm clocking in at around ten years total. Alas!
THE FAR SHORE FOOTAGE + DEV COMMENTARY
Recently Dan and Craig got together to record some dev commentary, to provide a glimpse at scenarios from early in The Far Shore's campaign.
https://youtu.be/cB2WaSUm59o
The first clip shows how a jett traverses a space -- ideally with scramjets toggled on, while surging and scooping vapor -- and then we get a look at what a jett scout gets up to, discovering and inspecting things while zipping around and taking sweet jumps.
https://youtu.be/0lCF_Ai8ovs
This second clip showcases a scenario that closes out The Far Shore's feature-film-length first real act: "I. Deploy". In this scenario, Mei and Isao have survived their first night on the far shore and they proceed to rendezvous with Wu and Vic in the woods of Tsosi Massif, where the appearance of a massive kolos, attended by retinue of hectors, make for a memorable, precarious moment for the scout unit.
NEXT POST: HOW JETT'S DESIGN EVOLVED
So yep, when we laid the foundation for JETT's grand design in ~2014 we had in mind Metroid Prime's Samus Aran zipping around on a jet ski, inside a Shadow of the Colossus inspired world, scanning things and gathering them, and learning to survive encounters with large, interesting Monster Hunter inspired creatures.
However, our feelings on what JETT ought to be continued to evolve as we responded to playtest feedback. As we found our way forward, we found other videogames to refer to, with No Man's Sky and Firewatch coming up fairly often in 2015 and 2016. No Man's Sky's emergence in 2014 and release in 2016 seemed to suggest that JETT find its own lane, and we found ourselves stepping away from a lot of doodads, gathering/crafting and procedurality. Meanwhile, Firewatch's release in 2016 seemed to suggested we take give our story and characters more attention, and so we began to lean in there.
More on these topics in a future post, probably!
OVER AND OUT, FOR NOW
If you read all the way to here then... wow! Hope you enjoyed it, and thanks.
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Thanks for your time and attention, cosmic friends!
If you'd like to read up on how sworcery led to JETT and how JETT's interstellar demo came about, you might enjoy the following post.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1761600/JETT_The_Far_Shore__Given_Time/?beta=1
