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











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.










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.

To get in the loop with Superbrothers and all things #sworcery, please like and subscribe and so forth.

Wishlist JETT on Steam and Download Demo - it helps!

• Play the prologue to get warmed up, and ensure your PC rig works.
  
• Note: We recommend playing on a controller, with headphones!

If you're a streamer or press, and if you'd like to play JETT: The Far Shore + Given Time and help us get the word out, please get in touch!

• We have piping hot preview keys near-at-hand, and we're around to chat.
  
• Get in touch at http://mailto:hello@superbrothers.ca and/or http://mailto:pr@popagenda.co.

Hop on the Superbrothers A/V - Enthusiasts newsletter via http://www.jett.fyi


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

Hey hi hello there. How're you?

Craig from Superbrothers A/V here, ie. that bozo what co-created both #sworcery and JETT.

A few weeks ago I popped up with a post to tell you about where #sworcery and JETT overlap.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/204060/view/3433458944730393702
Today I'm here to tell you a bit about: how #sworcery led to JETT, how JETT's memorable interstellar demo came about (incl some of my 2013-era character previz), and how my IRL experience as a new parent influenced aspects of its tone.

Before I dig in on those topics, I'd like to lay out a little fall 2022 snapshot to catch you up on what my fellow #sworcery co-creators are up to!


@craigdadams on Twitter (RIP?) and Instagram
@superbrothersHQ on Twitter (RIP?), @superbrothers on Instagram



COSMIC FRIENDS FOREVER

For Capy, that beloved Toronto videogame studio that caused #sworcery to happen, here are a coupla notes:

• #sworcery's co-lead designer Kris Piotrowski headed up the audiovisually immaculate roguelike videogame Below, available here on Steam and on Switch, featuring an outstanding score by Jim Guthrie.
  
• Capy's latest videogame is the puzzler Grindstone, which lit up Apple Arcade in 2019 with rave reviews, and is now here on Steam and on Switch, featuring a heckuva score by Sam Webster.

Oh, and worth a mention: Nathan Vella, who was the head of Capy back in #sworcery days, is now co-running the show at Annapurna Interactive, publisher of amazing videogames like Outer Wilds, Simogo's Sayonara Wild Hearts, Stray, and many more gems.




As for maestro Jim Guthrie, he has been keeping it real in Toronto in his 'shedquarters', his backyard recording studio, belting out great scores for videogames like Nobody Saves The World from Drinkbox Studios, Bleak Sword, and Capy's Below.



Alongside those efforts, it's worth noting that Jim Guthrie had a pretty key role to play in JETT. Jim composed a song called Out Of Our Hands that pretty reliably melts minds as it closes out the JETT demo.

Check out the JETT demo yourself and see what you think!







Note: Before and after Jim's song you'll be hearing JETT's epic musical score by composer scntfc (OXENFREE, Old Man's Journey), who also composed the moon grotto music in #sworcery. You can get ears on scntfc's JETT: The Far Shore OST album here.

If you're curious about what the JETT demo has on offer, or if you've already played it and you're curious how it came to be, then read on!


. . . . .





DEEP DIVE ON JETT'S INTERSTELLAR DEMO

Co-creator Patrick at Pine Scented and I had a JETT prototype in 2011, but it wasn't until 2013 that we started chipping away at the full concept, just the two of us. That's when the characters, the narrative and JETT's unorthodox gameplay came into focus. Note: If you'd like to see a glimpse of baby JETT from this time, here's Patrick's #jettdev thread on Twitter.

By 2015, we had The Far Shore and Given Time campaigns roughly mapped out, but at that time the experience began with Mei and Isao deploying from The Mother Structure to the unfamiliar planet of the far shore. An epic science fiction moment, for sure, but as time went on it began to feel too abrupt. Who are Mei and Isao? Why are they deploying to this planet? What is a jett and how do I fly it?

It occurred to me that, before immersing people in this complex unorthodox videogame, we really oughta consider cooking up and bolting on a kickass prologue.

The spec was to 1) intrigue and interest the player right from the get-go with an intricate and distinct storyworld 2) put the player on the hook personally and emotionally, and get them to be curious about and care for the people in this society 3) give players a sense of the gee whiz thrill of how it feels at the helm of a jett...then 4) give the player an opportunity to get familiar with the ensemble cast all before 4) melting some minds and taking players across space and 1000 years into the future.

Ideally we'd get all that done in a smooth 30 minutes. It was a tall order, particularly for two people, but a few months into 2016 we had it roughly in place and playable.

When people played it in mid 2016 we could see it was delivering pretty well, and that was before Jim's Out Of Our Hands song showed up in 2017.

Since those olden days the prologue and everything else got a metric ton of production effort, shaping and polish from dozens of people in the JETT Squad era from 2019 to 2021. I'm real proud of how it came together, and I hope it resonates with you.









At cosmodrome z-13 you'll meet the characters who make up your scout unit, from the leadership -- Misha, Pasha -- to Jones, jett ace and commander.

In the JETT demo you'll get a sense of who they are and what kind of headspace they're in, as they leave everything and everyone behind and embark on a one-way trip across space and 1000 years in the future, in the hope of carving out a future on some faraway world.

Here are a couple character drawings I had made back in 2013, including Mei's co-pilot Isao (a young George Takei) and jett ace Jones (what if Grace Jones was Captain Kirk).

In the olden times of 2014 to 2016, when it was just Patrick and I, it was up to me to create all the 3D models and pretty much anything else visual. It was a relief when we were able to bring in help, with my old pal Chris Beintema on deck for models and rigs for the characters and creatures in the shipping game.







Eventually, the time comes for Mei to lapse into torpor -- JETT's version of cryosleep -- and for her and her fellow scouts to be put aboard a rocket.

As the rocket ignites, we drop the needle on Jim's song "Out Of Our Hands"... and off we go, to dock with The Mother Structure in orbit above, and then set off across the sea of stars, to the far shore.



Here's a possibly interesting aside, about the tone of 0.Embark:

At TCAF 2015 I crossed paths with Dan Berry and I bought his comic Carry Me, a book about parenting, life and death that stuck with me. Related to Carry Me, in 2015 I was a new parent, my daughter having been born in 2014, and I got to thinking about who I most identified with in JETT's emerging story.


The short comic Carry Me by Dan Berry can be read in a handful of minutes at the following internet website. http://www.thingsbydan.co.uk/2017/04/read-carry-me/


Upon reflection, I became aware that the character with whom I resonated most in JETT was the protagonist's father. We meet him once, he apologizes, then wishes Mei well. He is to remain behind, while she sets off to the stars. There's a very specific agony and heartbreak at work here, because a parent knows that, if all goes well, their child will outlive them, and that there will someday be a tearful parting. What's more, parents here on Earth in the 21st century feel an additional weight, a heavy brew of regret and helplessness at the thought of the troubled future our children have been born into. I felt compelled to reckon with these feelings, and bottle some of them up in JETT.

Fast forwarding a few years, and Dan Berry found himself in JETT's orbit, climbing aboard the squad that delivered the Given Time expansion. Small world! You can read all about this in our recent JETT squad profile featuring Dan and Richard Flanagan.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1761600/view/3404184263846060375


Speaking of Dan, him and I are starting to broadcast dev commentary streams on the JETT Steam page. Keep an eye out for when our streams are live.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1761600/JETT_The_Far_Shore__Given_Time/





I hope you enjoyed the above!

To get in the loop with Superbrothers and all things #sworcery, please like and subscribe and so forth.

Wishlist JETT on Steam and Download Demo - it helps!

• Play the prologue to get warmed up, and ensure your PC rig works.
  
• Note: We recommend playing on a controller, with headphones!

If you're a streamer or press, and if you'd like to play JETT: The Far Shore + Given Time and help us get the word out, please get in touch!

• We have piping hot preview keys near-at-hand, and we're around to chat.
  
• Get in touch at http://mailto:hello@superbrothers.ca and/or http://mailto:pr@popagenda.co.

Hop on the Superbrothers A/V - Enthusiasts newsletter via http://www.jett.fyi

Give us a follow:

• Twitter (RIP?): @jettxyz @superbrothersHQ @craigdadams
  
• Instagram: @superbrothers
  
• Hive (?): @superbrothers

Poke around our websites:

• http://www.superbrothersHQ.com
  
• http://www.swordandsworcery.com
  
• http://www.jett.fyi

Thanks for your time and attention, cosmic friends!






we will meet again at the appointed time

Oh hi–I didn’t see you there. I was just putting the finishing touches on JETT: The Far Shore’s new campaign expansion, "Given Time," due early 2023.

Who am I, you ask?



I'm Craig D. Adams, the bozo who founded Superbrothers A/V way back in 2003. I'm also the co-creator of Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (2011/2012), as well as the co-creator of JETT: The Far Shore + Given Time (2021/2023).

In my job as creative director at Superbrothers A/V, an ongoing videogames conspiracy a totally normal company that creates videogames, I've been laser-focused on breathing life into the preposterously grandiose JETT, pretty much ever since the golden old sworcery days of yesteryear.

To give you an idea on how far back JETT goes, here's a #jettdev fun fact:

• The JETT prototype was born at the Toronto Game Jam in May 2011, about five weeks after sworcery's initial launch.
  
• Fun fact: Capy's Super T.I.M.E. Force was born at the same game jam, just the next table over from the Superbrothers (me) and Pine Scented (my old pal Patrick).

Well, a few years have passed since then, with JETT slow-cooking and getting shipshape.

Then, in 2021, JETT alighted with its its acclaimed narrative-driven campaign "The Far Shore".

Only it turns out, there's even more to JETT, and *that's* what we're talking about today.



Now in fall 2022 -- the future! -- I'm here to tell you that JETT is coming to Steam in early 2023, including a free new expansion that adds a full length campaign, called "Given Time." Personally, I'm elated to be delivering on the total vision for JETT with this release, after all these years.

JETT is an unorthodox science fiction videogame that evokes Ursula Le Guin, Stanislaw Lem, Frank Herbert, Werner Herzog, Ridley Scott and Stanley Kubrick. Its gameplay is built on a moment-to-moment locomotion that feels like snowboarding, within a design that relates to Metroid Prime.

If all that whets your appetite, then you really oughta take it for a spin. Yep that's right, there's a JETT demo and folks let me tell you: it's worth your limited time, and I'd love for you to play it.

Go to the JETT Steam page now, wishlist it and Download Demo.

If you're curious about how sworcery and JETT fit together, read on.


pic from @superbrothersHQ on Twitter

JETT's actually a lot like sworcery, despite the surface differences (polygons vs pixels, science fiction vs fantasy, stoic vs irreverent, complex controls vs simple controls). JETT's another unorthodox DIY-feeling effort from a tiny team, with some great music, some deep vibes, plus a smattering of bold choices and distinct ideas that'll sit with you for forever and a day.

Here are some specific ways that JETT resonates with sworcery:

• an experience with style, soul and heart
  
  • because I was on deck on both projects defining narrative, characters, tone, music cues and art direction, as well as co-creating design, you'll find a lot of resonance between the two projects -- they're cut from the same cloth
    
  • just like in sworcery, in JETT you'll find yourself moving through a lush world in a vibes-heavy adventure, where great music is often front and center
    
  • in terms of pacing, as you play, occasionally a threat'll pop up and you'll have some action to take care of, and often you'll encounter scenarios that involve a bit of puzzling
    
  • alongside the bombast, spectacle and puzzling, there are a plenty of quiet intimate moments, as well as a few strange dreams... and even a familiar-feeling nightmare apparition haunting dark corners
• story-wise, some echoes
  
  • there are some rich themes that are going to resonate with some of you out there
    
  • gently radical
  • a silent woman with a spooky destiny finds herself on a cosmic adventure and eventually goes up a weird mountain, then, much later on, she goes up the mountain again and di--
• coupla composers in common
  
  • composer scntfc created the moon grotto music in sworcery, which is a neat cameo in a great Jim Guthrie score
    
  • composer Jim Guthrie created the interstellar trip song Out Of Our Hands for JETT, a neat cameo in a great scntfc score
• also, a bit of intentional sfx overlap
  
  • you might notice the 'adventure lead-in' sound is used in both
    
  • sworcery's 'trigons' make something of an appearance inside JETT's 'phosfiends'
    
  • sworcery's 'sylvan sprites' aka space babies and JETT's 'brine wisp' sounds are the same - why, you might ask?

Given all of the above resonances and linkages, you may find yourself wondering: do sworcery and JETT take place in the same universe? Are the two projects connected, and if so, how directly are they connected?

Devoted JETT-heads may have discerned the truth, but now isn't the time to just spell things out.





Well, thanks for reading all this, whoever you are, and I hope you're getting curious about JETT. It has been a labor of love for me for a long time, and it would mean a lot to me if you sworcery-folks checked it out, and if you do, I hope you resonate with it and tell your cosmic friends!!

To get in the loop and hear more about sworcery-things, plus JETT and its upcoming early 2023 release, and other Superbrothers-related happenings, please click around below.

• Wishlist JETT on Steam and Download Demo - seriously, it's a good one!
  
  • Play the prologue to get warmed up, and to check that your PC rig works.
    
  • Note: We recommend playing on a controller, with headphones.
• If you're a streamer or press, and if you'd like to play JETT: The Far Shore + Given Time and help us get the word out, please get in touch!
  
  • We have piping hot preview keys near-at-hand, and we're around to chat.
    
  • Get in touch at http://mailto:hello@superbrothers.ca and/or http://mailto:pr@popagenda.co.
• Give us a follow:
  
  • Twitter: @jettxyz @superbrothersHQ @craigdadams
    
  • Instagram: @superbrothers
    
  • Hop on the Superbrothers A/V - Enthusiasts newsletter via http://www.jett.fyi
• Poke around our websites:
  
  • http://www.superbrothersHQ.com
    
  • http://www.swordandsworcery.com
    
  • http://www.jett.fyi

To hear more about what Capy and Jim Guthrie have been up to, keep your eye out for another post like this here on Steam.

Ok, that's it* for now - thanks for your time and attention, cosmic friends!







* Oh, are you still reading?

Looking for more?

Well now, let's see.

Ah, there is this one thing.

Here:


What's this? Well, it's a little slice of a playable something special related to sworcery that will surface at the appointed time, a few moons hence.