“The idea of there being this ancient ritual competition in which exiles could earn back their freedom from purgatory was exciting to us,” Kasavin says, who serves as the lead writer for Supergiant. Then you travel the land of purgatory looking to cleanse your souls by defeating other exiles in these competitions. You start off as an exiled character and upon meeting others like you, you create a party of three. The ritual competitions Zee mentions are the crux of the game’s premise. The ritual competitions central to Pyre, with their ceremonial robes and masks, gave me the perfect excuse.” “ Saint Seiya was also very much on my mind – the mysterious, masked anonymity of the female saints Marin and Shaina is a really cool idea I'd always wanted to explore. “I just love the look of traditional mediums and bringing them into the games we create,” Zee adds. Though the influences come from a myriad of sources, Zee says the pen-and-ink works of Italian illustrator Sergio Toppi, and American artist Franklin Booth, were at the forefront in the beginning. For Pyre, as before, she has come up with a distinctive look for the characters, and the game’s high fantasy setting has given her the licence to go wild, which shows in the variety of horns on human heads, or animals standing up on two feet. Together, the two games have sold just about 5 million copies but more importantly, both have been singled out for how beautiful they look, and how engaging they are to play.Ī lot of that is thanks to Supergiant’s art director Jen Zee, who has been with the indie studio from the start. It’s a new action role-playing title (that borrows other genre elements) from the same tight-knit core team that gave the world Bastion in 2011, and Transistor in 2014.

Kasavin is talking about the studio’s next game – Pyre – which comes out worldwide on July 25 after close to three years in development. “We didn’t set out to make a bigger game for the sake of it, but the larger cast of characters ended up requiring this, in order for the story to feel fulfilling and complete.”

“It’s our biggest game, with more characters and more ways to play than either of our previous games,” Greg Kasavin, creative director at Supergiant Games, tells Gadgets 360.

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