Pyre Strikes The Spark of Rebellion

THE SACRIFICE PLAY Thanks to the recent success of the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, players are experiencing many games they might not have tried otherwise. Among the over 1700 titles on display is Pyre, developer SuperGiant Games’ third title. Three years ago, Pyre debuted to a critical reception best characterized as ‘polite confusion’. The creators of indie darlings such as Bastion and Transistor made a game where players manage a fantasy sports team? Not fantasy sports as in ‘an All-Star line-up of legendary real-life players’, but more like ‘a talking dog passes a glowing power orb down field to the horned giantess’? Unless someone missed a #Blitzball4Life trending tag, there was no reason to believe the game industry was losing out on any particular cross-section of Final Fantasy and FIFA fans. Despite a lack of comparable mechanics, it’s worth discussing the shared narrative arc at the heart of these games. Whether a championship or a Lord of Ultimate Darkness looms at the end, the roads to the finales are paved in much the same way: conflict and competition, level-ups and losses, setbacks and sacrifices.

The Oregon Trail discovers peyote. AWAY GAME Pyre’s road begins with you…quite literally. Players are embodied (with their own preferred pronouns) in the story as a nameless wanderer in a peculiar desert. Three strangers in a broken-down wagon pick you up, revealing that you share their fate as outcasts in the wasteland known as the Downside. The only wa…