Burning ambition

Supergiant Games strikes out into new territory with party RPG Pyre

Bastion and Transistor developer Supergiant Games strikes out into bold new territory

Supergiant Games has a knack for creating striking-looking games, and its third title, Pyre, is its most handsome project yet. A party-based RPG, the game puts you in control of a group of unfortunates trying to earn a reprieve from the purgatory into which they’ve been cast. You’re given a set amount of time each day to travel about the world map, visiting ritual locations where you can take part in a kind of mystical threevs-three take on Speedball. The goal is to plunge a celestial orb into your opposition’s pyre in order to extinguish it and thus gradually earn back the respect of your divine jailers.

“We were very interested in making a game with an ensemble cast,” explains writer and designer Greg Kasavin. “We love creating characters and worlds for our games, though our previous titles have had very limited numbers of characters in them. When we thought about a setting that would support a larger cast, a lot of ideas started falling into place and we wanted to set up an environment where these colourful characters would have to depend on one another to accomplish their personal goals.”

That design brief led the San Jose studio away from its action-RPG staple and into Pyre’s party territory, while the fantasy setting sent the team down a new road visually. “We wanted to evoke the feel of classic fantasy artwork from the ’70s and the ’80s,” Kasavin explains. “Jen Zee, our art director, has had to face the challenge of developing a unique visual style for each of our games thus far, and with Pyre she’s really been able to stretch her imagination by creating a world with a bigger sense of scale and grandeur than what we’ve been able to accomplish in the past.”

Pyre is set for release on PS4 and PC next year.