Despite a teaser video and a brief blurb, details of Bastion developer Supergiant’s next project, Transistor, have been sparse on the ground.
Though a new video out from Total Biscuit shows him play through the 15 minute demo available on the PAX East showfloor.
It’s already looking a little special
The main things to take away, features-wise, from this video is the similarity and difference to Bastion: immediately recognisable is the simplicity of control but with a scope of depth that made Supergiant’s first game so entertaining. So, for instance, we see that as the protagonist unlocks more moves with the Transistor she never picks up more than four, keeping them limited to the face buttons of the controller. Bastion had a similar system, there were only two combat buttons and those were linked to which two weapons were equipped. Now, in Bastion, those weapons could be switched out and replaced, plus, each of them could also be upgraded and altered in a myriad of ways, which is where the combat depth found its way in. Here, in Transistor, we can see already the scope for customisation, selecting which four powers you’ve equipped to the sword and that each of the powers can be levelled up (hopefully in a similar way to Bastion, where it wasn’t a straight upgrade but you had to pick between two branching upgrades, one to speed, say, that precluded upgrading strength) should provide a great deal of power and variation to our play.
Next up is that hybrid of real-time combat and turn-based combat. It looks like a neat system that can be leant on by players from either field. Personally, I’m a little slow in the combat department so having the option to pause the action and line up a few attacks fits me just fine but I like that the option is there for me to go straight in sword arm swinging.
Separate to those features, everything else about the game seemed to be up to the quality of Bastion. The artwork is similarly painterly but clearly different, the colours are more in the purple muted spectrum compared to the vibrant greens of Bastion. And, the music, from what we heard is absolutely up to scratch with Darren Korb’s work in their last game.
Genuinely very excited to see how this game develops before its 2014 release.
Oh, and don’t forget, Bastion is currently on a pay what you want deal over on Humble Bundle.