based on our conversation last wednesday, it seems to me that pyre is a very hard game to talk about. as we discussed, it resists categorization, which, unfortunately, seemed to have a negative impact on its commercial reception. and i will admit that, despite pyre being my favorite of supergiant games’s creations, i also have difficulty describing it to people who haven’t played it.
“so, it’s like, a narrative RPG, but it’s isometric like hades, and you’re collecting characters along your way… but the main mechanic is playing a 3-on-3 basketball/soccer hybrid… just play it, okay?”
it doesn’t have a nice tagline or pithy description. it’s a weird little game about a bunch of weird little guys playing a weird little sport to get to freedom. cool.
“so, it’s like, a narrative RPG, but it’s isometric like hades, and you’re collecting characters along your way… but the main mechanic is playing a 3-on-3 basketball/soccer hybrid… just play it, okay?”
i agree that pyre is a game that resists discussion. but thinking along the lines of genre theory, i want to open up a discussion of why some would call pyre a “bad” game purely based on it being a playtpus. spoilers for my final video essay, but i think that genre is a tool: a descriptor rather than a prescriptor. it’s a communication device. if i described pyre as a narrative sports sim, that would communicate a number of things to you: it’s about the inherent narrative potential located in a single or series of games (shoutout to the dodgers and the blue jays in the recently wrapped up world series); it’s about failing and still having the play with the same people who just watched you fail; it’s about playing a game (within a game); it’s about the story of each of the players, if you’ll care to listen. it’s remember the titans (2000). it’s cool runnings (1993). it’s i, tonya (2017). it’s haikyuu! (2012-2020). it’s yuri on ice (2016-17). and doesn’t that just make perfect sense?
I think you bring up an interesting point about using genre as a tool that helps people understand a game better. But I sort of disagree with the distinction between “descriptor” vs “prescriptor.” In choosing what words to describe Pyre as, I think you are necessarily also prescribing your own interpretation of what Pyre is, and this is where some may take issue with Pyre. Each person will interpret what genre Pyre is in their own way, like different people might view a platypus as different animals. I think this lack of cohesion with how Pyre can be described can lead people to be uninterested in playing the game.