#swordtales

Swordtales was an indie studio in Brazil, staffed by many first-timers in commercial game development (or at least their Mobygames profiles mostly don't have any other games on file to their names). They seem to have gone defunct, another casualty of the cutthroat video games industry. But before they dissolved, they managed to put out a short Ico-like adventure which, while rough around the edges, has some neat ideas and imagery.

The story of Toren is hard to explain... it's conveyed piecemeal and out of order, via digressions and abstractions. But you eventually glean that human hubris built a tower that challenged the heavens—sound familiar?—to which the Sun (yes, that Sun) took great umbrage, and now the flow of time has stopped. To avert catastrophe and restore the natural order, a girl was granted the hopes of humanity to ascend the tower and something something the moon, and there's a dragon, plus a legendary warrior is involved somehow...

The real central idea of the game is that Moonchild is locked in a cycle of rebirth: aging, dying, and coming back as a baby born from blood, repeatedly fighting the dragon but never victorious. She starts in the prologue a grizzled warrior, before coming back a toddler. As you progress you will age from child to youth to adult, her character design getting cool flourishes each time (check out Pedro Jatobá's ArtStation for a better look at these than the game itself offers). It's like Jaleco's arcade game Momoko 120% but instead of a gun you have a sword.

The idea of resurrection is used in a clever way a couple of times, where the dragon petrifies Moonchild's body, then you respawn but your previous stone form remains, letting you progress somehow. I wish this had been explored further as it's an excellent idea that's just underutilised. Otherwise progression is via little puzzle sections where you have to approach the dragon past its buffeting winds and magic shockwaves, or you're ascending the tower by growing a tree, lighting braziers, or other interactions. Small enemy blobs with teeth sometimes get in your way but they're not a serious hindrance.

You also sometimes go into dream sequences, and Moonchild's inner world opens things up for some more surreal imagery. It doesn't get too wild but it's a nice change of pace, and usually involves a new kind of puzzle where you draw patterns with salt. None of the puzzles are very taxing at all, in fact the whole game is quite gentle but that can be a nice thing. Some of these dream zones (and a couple of unlockable bits of gear) are missable, so maybe check a guide... or play the whole game twice, like I did! With the themes of reincarnation and cyclical time, it seemed appropriate and I got a better grasp of the whole thing that way. It's short enough that I in fact wasn't completely satisfied until having done a second run.

I really must address some rough spots here. The first thing you'll notice is the game's look, which resembles a very early PS3 game with its shoddy textures and performance, coupled with a sort of blurry wobble effect to the lighting, especially in the dreams. The technical shortcomings do a disservice to the art design, so it ends up not totally delivering on its promise, and it is promising! The play control and animations are also stiff and awkward, so on top of unchallenging puzzles and simplistic platforming the gameplay is just not as special as it should have been.