Pyre, As Told By Steam Reviews

Supergiant Games has a penchant for creating games that stand out. Pyre is no different.

The latest game from the makers of Bastion and Transistor, Pyre is a game that’s an odd mix of sports and a party RPG. Like Supergiant’s previous games, it’s incredibly vibrant and comes with a beautiful, occasionally haunting, soundtrack.

But the main drawcard is the action, a 3v3 game where each team tries to ferry a celestial orb into the other team’s pyre (read: goal). You can only move one character at a time, and each character has an aura of their own that will banish other characters if they enter into their sphere of influence. Characters with larger auras will banish those with smaller ones, however, so it becomes an interesting game of dodging, jumping, sprinting and passing, while each team tries to shuffle the orb through to the goal.

[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/07/pyre-the-kotaku-review/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/mkkvbhnpwueaor37vboe.jpg” title=”Pyre: The Kotaku Review” excerpt=”Pyre is a sports game about starting a revolution. In a worse game, that would be a joke, but Pyre takes both its sports and its politics seriously and combines them in an unexpectedly compelling way.”]

Sitting at an 87% user rating from almost 900 reviews at the time of writing, Pyre‘s take on football – it’s more American football than soccer, at least in my experience – has been broadly well received. Some users have likened it to “anime football”, while others enjoyed the fact that you could do “slam dunks with your dog”. The soundtrack has gone down a treat, though, and the overall look of Pyre‘s world and characters has been enjoyed even amongst the negative reviews.

Criticisms of the game range from the visual novel style used to tell the story, which some users argued was uninteresting. Others also complained that the gameplay lacked variety, and that the upgrade paths and game twists didn’t offer the same kind of momentous decision that players faced in Transistor or Bastion.

Here’s what Steam users are saying about Pyre:

Images: Steam