Guacamelee Dev's Latest Game Is Darker, Deeper Than Its Predecessor

Drinkbox Studios’ next game, Severed, is leagues different than its predecessor, the luchador-themed brawler Guacamelee. Severed may carry the distinct bright colors and art style that Drinkbox has distinguished itself for, but the overall tone of the game is much, much darker.

In Severed, you control a young woman, Sasha, who wakes up alone in a strange world. After waking up in an empty desert and stumbling upon an abandoned burning house, you discover Sasha's left forearm is gone, ending in a bloody stump at the elbow. Remember bits about her arm's fate, you learn Sasha's family is gone, sent to somewhere they need rescuing from. If they aren't rescued, they'll be gone forever.

Sasha’s journey takes a bizarre turn when a mysterious demonic entity gifts her a sword, allowing her to hack away at obstacles in her path and kill attacking enemies. This sword becomes an extension on your arm, replacing the limb lost.

Severed is a PlayStation Vita exclusive, and while the game can’t be neatly categorized in any specific genre, it does show influence from several styles of games. Like in a point-and-click adventure, you move through a series of rooms. Some of these rooms hold objects you need, like a key to open a door, breakable vases filled with supplies, or a magical golden fruit that will fill your health gauge. Tapping the front Vita screen allows you to interact with these objects, smashing pots and eating the fruit.

While exploration sequences feel like your typical old-school adventure game, the combat system is reminiscent of active time battle systems present in older role-playing games. In active time battles, enemies have a gauge of some sort that fills up while they are charging an attack. Once they gauge is full, they attack. In Severed, enemies--small, strange creatures--each have a small circular gauge beneath them that will gradually fill up. During this time, the enemy will reveal a weak spot that, if hit enough times, will kill them.

You attack enemies by swiping your finger across the touchscreen. Swiping against an enemy’s raised arm as they are about to attack will block it, and swiping across an enemy from right to left will land a hit. Some enemies are trickier to take down and you’ll have to wait until they reveal a weak spot. One enemy will grow mushroom caps on its body as it charges its attack, and attacking these caps will reset their gauge. During this time, the enemy may open its one eye, and if you attack the eye you can deal more damage. Another enemy resembles a grid of floating diamonds with an eye that occasionally opens up among them. You have to attack the eye without hitting of the surrounding diamonds in order to deal damage.

Landing a series of successful attacks will charge up a special meter that allows for more powerful, extravagant attacks. Once this gauge is full, tapping on a vulnerable enemy will allow you to severe its limbs, hacking its body to pieces. These body parts can then be used to upgrade you own abilities, such as you strength and health.

This sounds simple, but with a variety of different enemy types to discover and figure out, combat never feels dull. There’s a lot to learn here, such as which enemies yield the body parts you need for your upgrades. Successfully navigating two or three enemies at a time is a challenge, as all enemy gauges will refill at different rates and if you are attacking one, another can still land a hit on you. But figuring this out comes with a satisfying payoff, as you will now know what to do when faced with this situation again. Combat itself doesn't make you feel especially powerful, but the strategy in timing your attacks makes it a worthy challenge.

Severed looks gorgeous. You play from Sasha’s perspective in the first person, so you view everything through her eyes. Forests are bright splashes of turquoise and aquamarine, with the deepest shadows in shimmering purple and a sprinkling of weeds in deep emerald green. Sunsets are a smattered of pink and gold that fan out along the horizon line, and the fruit you eat to replenish health is a juicy shade of vivid orange. The character design borrows from Guacamelee’s exaggerated body curves and angles, with big round eyes and sheets of dark hair. It’s beautiful to look at, encouraging you to explore.

But what makes Severed really stand out is the contrast between its beautiful design and disturbing themes. There is a moment just before the first major boss battle, an image so jarring that it rattles you just enough to stumble a little during the fight. Severed pulls no punches with its dedication to a darker story, a narrative that begins with a severed arm and continues down a path of death, fear, and desecration. There are times when the game's violence takes uncomfortable dark turns.

According to Drinkbox COO Graham Smith, the studio isn't trying to rile anyone up with the more outright violent nature of Severed, but rather make its players think. In an industry saturated with games about hacking people to pieces and riddling them with bullet holes, Severed presents a different view on disembodied limbs and death. In a way it reminds me of the cartoon Samurai Jack, in which the hero is subjected to despicable things--and sometimes doing horrible things--in order to make his way back to his family. And a little like Jack, Sasha has been dealt a second chance to save the people she loves.

Drinkbox’s next game may be following in the tradition of Guacamelee visually, but thematically and combat-wise it’s a whole new story. The darker tone and technicolor art style work well together, presenting a gorgeous world that is jarring in its danger.

Severed will launch for PlayStation Vita in spring 2015.