![\"\"](\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/the-story-behind-supergiant-games-pyre.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/the-story-behind-supergiant-games-pyre-1.jpg\")
<\/article>\nNew Studio, New Attitude<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\nWith two hits under its belt, Supergiant had the urge (and resources) to try something more ambitious. After having so many challenges on Transistor, the group was in a much better place when starting work on Pyre. Their newfound success allowed them to upgrade to a fancier studio, moving to a nicer part of San Francisco right next to a coffee shop and chocolate factory.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAccording to principal voice actor Logan Cunningham, the work\/life balance was starting to \u201cclick into place,\u201d as more team members were having families. New wellness policies, like mandatory vacation, were ensuring members took care of themselves. \u201cThe whole process on Pyre was just much more pleasant than anything we’ve done before,\u201d Cunningham recalls.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe team also felt it had proved that Bastion wasn\u2019t just a flash in the pan, and it was ready to experiment in ways it hadn\u2019t before. For Pyre, the group decided to go bigger, with a party-based RPG and a procedural narrative. However, it also got a bit experimental and eccentric with NBA Jam-inspired gameplay. \u201cWe went wild, and I think we also went wilder than we thought we were gonna go,\u201d says art director Jen Zee. \u201cI think what I remember as the motivating factor\u00a0behind Pyre was we were sick of doing worlds where there was only one person.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOne important aspect of Pyre\u2019s development is how the studio decided on which ideas to pursue. Supergiant believes in a collaborative process, where members discuss their interests and pick the elements that most excite them. As a way to avoid Transistor\u2019s long and fraught pre-production issue, Supergiant Games got straight down to business on Pyre. \u201cWe just told everybody to go chase their passions and then we\u2019ll figure out how to put it together,\u201d Kasavin says.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nKasavin tackles the synthesis of those ideas, combining everyone\u2019s contributions and deciding what ties them all together for a game concept. \u201cI would go so far as to say that\u2019s my primary role,\u201d Kasavin says. \u201cThat\u2019s probably one of the most important things I do, because we\u2019re not a studio where one person says, \u2018Here\u2019s the game we\u2019re making.\u2019 So with Pyre as a concrete example, Amir and Gavin were prototyping this competitive sport. Jen was creating these wild characters \u2013 tree people and worm people \u2013 and I\u2019m giving my own ideas about what the world and what the play experience can be.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/the-story-behind-supergiant-games-pyre-2.jpg\")
<\/article>\nThe Power Of Saying Goodbye<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\nWhile the Supergiant team might be shy to use the word \u201csports\u201d to describe Pyre\u2019s genre, it was on the studio\u2019s mind. Technical director Andrew Wang recalls fantasy football becoming popular at Supergiant, and the sports fans were wondering how to incorporate the fun of following a team. Then things took an interesting turn. \u201cAmir was talking about retirement, specifically in a sports context when a star athlete has to make that calculation,\u201d Kasavin recalls. \u201cDo you go out on top? Do you play another season? And what\u2019s going through your head when you do that? That led to these broader conversations about the experience of saying goodbye to a close friend.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThat last part is what made players connect with the game in a special way<\/a>. Sure, competing in Rites to win against other teams brings the adrenaline rush of competition, but you essentially were fighting to give a character you\u2019ve befriended their freedom from exile, or as Kasavin likes to put, \u201cgiving them a return to glory to where they came from.\u201d Every Rite came with the opportunity to give a character a better life, but the goodbye always hit hard, as they were out of your party for the rest of the game.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u201cA lot of players who enjoyed Pyre, they remark on these moments in the game, the liberation rites, where you have a chance to say goodbye to someone you care about,\u201d Kasavin says. \u201cI’m really glad that that worked out, because in hindsight, that was a really hard thing to prototype. You needed all the surrounding context and the build up [to these matches], but you also needed to have time with these characters and grow to care about them for the stakes of that moment to be meaningful in any way. Then you need all the stuff after that moment to [create the] experience of them no longer being around and have other characters talk about how they miss that character.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nAnd this is only a sample of the extra thought and care Supergiant had to put into everything in Pyre. The game succeeds because of how all of its parts complement one another, but it took a lot of effort to make everything come together, both technically and creatively.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/the-story-behind-supergiant-games-pyre-3.jpg\")
<\/article>\nAmbitious Undertakings<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\nHaving more characters who interacted with one another, playing in bigger spaces, and accounting for player choices gave the team a lot to take on, and they did it all while staying the same size: 12 people. \u201cWe dreamed big for Pyre, and from the technical side, it ended up being quite challenging,\u201d Wang says. \u201cPyre was almost like doing two games. On the technical side, there were very different requirements for being able to see this wide-open world versus the more reactive, action-oriented sports stuff. What I optimized in one version wouldn\u2019t necessarily help the other.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThe project bred challenge, especially for the narrative having to account for the different states a player\u2019s party could be in due to their choices. \u201cFor my part, it was this big exploration into procedural narrative,\u201d Kasavin says. \u201cEssentially, there’s a lot of optional procedural scenes that are varied based on the character. We had to account for you having any number of characters in your group at a given time.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nThis meant supporting a playthrough where the player lost every Rite and still having it make sense for the overall story. Kasavin knew this was a big task, but felt it fit with the game\u2019s themes of accepting failure and moving on.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nPyre was also the first time Kasavin wrote dialogue for characters in a game, which was refreshing and would later provide an invaluable learning experience that would come in handy for Supergiant\u2019s next title. \u201cPyre was the first time where two, sometimes three, and sometimes even four characters may be talking to each other and have a scene like that,\u201d Kasavin says. \u201cThat was a fun experience for me. A lot of that, certainly on the narrative side, Hades picked up right where Pyre left off.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nOn Pyre, everyone was constantly learning new things due to the ambition of what the team wanted to accomplish. Composer and audio director Darren Korb found the sound for the game early with what he calls \u201cits acoustic \u201870s fantasy rock,\u201d which is more in his wheelhouse. \u201cMy goal for [Pyre\u2019s music] was to extrapolate a genre of music from the intro to [Led Zeppelin\u2019s] \u201cStairway to Heaven,\u201d just the flute and the guitar thing. So, that’s what I tried to do and it was a useful creative guide.”\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nHowever, creating the sound didn\u2019t come without some challenges, especially when having it be more reactive to what the player is doing. \u201cThere is a very complicated dynamic music system in [Pyre],\u201d Korb says. \u201cThe whole piece could dynamically switch based on what was happening in the game. It was really valuable from a learning perspective for us. One of the things we learned was after a certain amount of interactivity, there’s diminishing returns if it’s too subtle, if it’s not noticeable. After all, the point of the interactivity is to notice it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/arcader.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/the-story-behind-supergiant-games-pyre-4.jpg\")
<\/article>\nThe Biggest Challenge With Pyre…<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\nDevelopment director Gavin Simon sums up Pyre in a way that captures its beauty and also its problem: \u201cWith Pyre, we made a game that there probably is no counterpart for in the game industry,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nIf anything cost Pyre some of its appeal, it was the difficulty people had understanding exactly what the game was. \u201cI think it was alienating for some of our other fans and very hard to pitch and describe to people,\u201d Zee says.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nKasavin agrees: \u201cIf we have trouble clearly articulating what we’re working on, we have to ask ourselves, \u2018Do we want that?\u2019 I love Pyre. I think some of the best work I’ve ever done is in that game, but the part where it was hard to describe to people? I don’t love that part.\u201d.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nPyre launched and received stellar reviews<\/a>, but it didn\u2019t match the sales or status of Bastion and Transistor. However, Pyre did what it needed to. \u201cWhat we look for in our games is, \u2018Did it do well enough for us to be able to keep going? And is it a capable game? Do some of our players love it the most out of all our games?\u2019 [Pyre] absolutely hit those checkmarks for us,\u201d Kasavin says.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nEven if Pyre didn\u2019t shine as brightly as the studio\u2019s previous titles, it was a stepping stone for what would ultimately be Supergiant\u2019s biggest hit. \u201cI\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again: I can\u2019t imagine that Hades would even exist if not for Pyre,\u201d Kasavin says. \u201cI didn\u2019t ever get it out of my system \u2013 the idea of escaping from purgatory.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\nBe sure to check out our previous features on Bastion<\/a> and Transistor<\/a>, and stay tuned for our final entry, with Supergiant’s journey through Hades<\/a>, coming soon.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
According to principal voice actor Logan Cunningham, the work\/life balance was starting to \u201cclick into place,\u201d as more team members were having families. New wellness policies, like mandatory vacation, were ensuring members took care of themselves. \u201cThe whole process on Pyre was just much more pleasant than anything we’ve done before,\u201d Cunningham recalls.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The team also felt it had proved that Bastion wasn\u2019t just a flash in the pan, and it was ready to experiment in ways it hadn\u2019t before. For Pyre, the group decided to go bigger, with a party-based RPG and a procedural narrative. However, it also got a bit experimental and eccentric with NBA Jam-inspired gameplay. \u201cWe went wild, and I think we also went wilder than we thought we were gonna go,\u201d says art director Jen Zee. \u201cI think what I remember as the motivating factor\u00a0behind Pyre was we were sick of doing worlds where there was only one person.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n One important aspect of Pyre\u2019s development is how the studio decided on which ideas to pursue. Supergiant believes in a collaborative process, where members discuss their interests and pick the elements that most excite them. As a way to avoid Transistor\u2019s long and fraught pre-production issue, Supergiant Games got straight down to business on Pyre. \u201cWe just told everybody to go chase their passions and then we\u2019ll figure out how to put it together,\u201d Kasavin says.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Kasavin tackles the synthesis of those ideas, combining everyone\u2019s contributions and deciding what ties them all together for a game concept. \u201cI would go so far as to say that\u2019s my primary role,\u201d Kasavin says. \u201cThat\u2019s probably one of the most important things I do, because we\u2019re not a studio where one person says, \u2018Here\u2019s the game we\u2019re making.\u2019 So with Pyre as a concrete example, Amir and Gavin were prototyping this competitive sport. Jen was creating these wild characters \u2013 tree people and worm people \u2013 and I\u2019m giving my own ideas about what the world and what the play experience can be.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n While the Supergiant team might be shy to use the word \u201csports\u201d to describe Pyre\u2019s genre, it was on the studio\u2019s mind. Technical director Andrew Wang recalls fantasy football becoming popular at Supergiant, and the sports fans were wondering how to incorporate the fun of following a team. Then things took an interesting turn. \u201cAmir was talking about retirement, specifically in a sports context when a star athlete has to make that calculation,\u201d Kasavin recalls. \u201cDo you go out on top? Do you play another season? And what\u2019s going through your head when you do that? That led to these broader conversations about the experience of saying goodbye to a close friend.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n That last part is what made players connect with the game in a special way<\/a>. Sure, competing in Rites to win against other teams brings the adrenaline rush of competition, but you essentially were fighting to give a character you\u2019ve befriended their freedom from exile, or as Kasavin likes to put, \u201cgiving them a return to glory to where they came from.\u201d Every Rite came with the opportunity to give a character a better life, but the goodbye always hit hard, as they were out of your party for the rest of the game.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA lot of players who enjoyed Pyre, they remark on these moments in the game, the liberation rites, where you have a chance to say goodbye to someone you care about,\u201d Kasavin says. \u201cI’m really glad that that worked out, because in hindsight, that was a really hard thing to prototype. You needed all the surrounding context and the build up [to these matches], but you also needed to have time with these characters and grow to care about them for the stakes of that moment to be meaningful in any way. Then you need all the stuff after that moment to [create the] experience of them no longer being around and have other characters talk about how they miss that character.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n And this is only a sample of the extra thought and care Supergiant had to put into everything in Pyre. The game succeeds because of how all of its parts complement one another, but it took a lot of effort to make everything come together, both technically and creatively.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Having more characters who interacted with one another, playing in bigger spaces, and accounting for player choices gave the team a lot to take on, and they did it all while staying the same size: 12 people. \u201cWe dreamed big for Pyre, and from the technical side, it ended up being quite challenging,\u201d Wang says. \u201cPyre was almost like doing two games. On the technical side, there were very different requirements for being able to see this wide-open world versus the more reactive, action-oriented sports stuff. What I optimized in one version wouldn\u2019t necessarily help the other.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The project bred challenge, especially for the narrative having to account for the different states a player\u2019s party could be in due to their choices. \u201cFor my part, it was this big exploration into procedural narrative,\u201d Kasavin says. \u201cEssentially, there’s a lot of optional procedural scenes that are varied based on the character. We had to account for you having any number of characters in your group at a given time.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n This meant supporting a playthrough where the player lost every Rite and still having it make sense for the overall story. Kasavin knew this was a big task, but felt it fit with the game\u2019s themes of accepting failure and moving on.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Pyre was also the first time Kasavin wrote dialogue for characters in a game, which was refreshing and would later provide an invaluable learning experience that would come in handy for Supergiant\u2019s next title. \u201cPyre was the first time where two, sometimes three, and sometimes even four characters may be talking to each other and have a scene like that,\u201d Kasavin says. \u201cThat was a fun experience for me. A lot of that, certainly on the narrative side, Hades picked up right where Pyre left off.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n On Pyre, everyone was constantly learning new things due to the ambition of what the team wanted to accomplish. Composer and audio director Darren Korb found the sound for the game early with what he calls \u201cits acoustic \u201870s fantasy rock,\u201d which is more in his wheelhouse. \u201cMy goal for [Pyre\u2019s music] was to extrapolate a genre of music from the intro to [Led Zeppelin\u2019s] \u201cStairway to Heaven,\u201d just the flute and the guitar thing. So, that’s what I tried to do and it was a useful creative guide.”\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n However, creating the sound didn\u2019t come without some challenges, especially when having it be more reactive to what the player is doing. \u201cThere is a very complicated dynamic music system in [Pyre],\u201d Korb says. \u201cThe whole piece could dynamically switch based on what was happening in the game. It was really valuable from a learning perspective for us. One of the things we learned was after a certain amount of interactivity, there’s diminishing returns if it’s too subtle, if it’s not noticeable. After all, the point of the interactivity is to notice it.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Development director Gavin Simon sums up Pyre in a way that captures its beauty and also its problem: \u201cWith Pyre, we made a game that there probably is no counterpart for in the game industry,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n If anything cost Pyre some of its appeal, it was the difficulty people had understanding exactly what the game was. \u201cI think it was alienating for some of our other fans and very hard to pitch and describe to people,\u201d Zee says.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Kasavin agrees: \u201cIf we have trouble clearly articulating what we’re working on, we have to ask ourselves, \u2018Do we want that?\u2019 I love Pyre. I think some of the best work I’ve ever done is in that game, but the part where it was hard to describe to people? I don’t love that part.\u201d.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Pyre launched and received stellar reviews<\/a>, but it didn\u2019t match the sales or status of Bastion and Transistor. However, Pyre did what it needed to. \u201cWhat we look for in our games is, \u2018Did it do well enough for us to be able to keep going? And is it a capable game? Do some of our players love it the most out of all our games?\u2019 [Pyre] absolutely hit those checkmarks for us,\u201d Kasavin says.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Even if Pyre didn\u2019t shine as brightly as the studio\u2019s previous titles, it was a stepping stone for what would ultimately be Supergiant\u2019s biggest hit. \u201cI\u2019ve said it before and I\u2019ll say it again: I can\u2019t imagine that Hades would even exist if not for Pyre,\u201d Kasavin says. \u201cI didn\u2019t ever get it out of my system \u2013 the idea of escaping from purgatory.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Be sure to check out our previous features on Bastion<\/a> and Transistor<\/a>, and stay tuned for our final entry, with Supergiant’s journey through Hades<\/a>, coming soon.<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/article>\nThe Power Of Saying Goodbye<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/article>\nAmbitious Undertakings<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/article>\nThe Biggest Challenge With Pyre…<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n
\n