Introduction

Pyre

“[W]hat happens when you face defeat, and have to come back from it the next day, look your friends in the face, look yourself in the mirror, and deal with the consequences of the decisions you made[?]" (Source)

Pyre is the third title released by indie development team Supergiant Games, released on July 25th, 2017. It was announced in April of 2016.

Pyre had no design documents; no elevator pitches; there was no inspiration that had struck a Supergiant Games employee while he was walking his dog. Pyre was conceived when the developers were trying to think of a game idea based on a common fact of life: failure, and dealing with the consequences of it. It was imagined by Greg Kasavin during a brainstorming session with other Supergiant Games developers on what their next game should be.

Taking this concept to heart, an interesting facet of Pyre is that, at no point during your run, can you possibly ‘game over’ and be forced to start again. Pyre is a unique blend of fantasy sports and visual novel; the decisions you make during the Sportsball sections, especially whether you win or lose, will significantly affect the flow of the story and the way Pyre’s characters interact with you, the player.

The LP

First thing to note is that this LP will be a hybrid: as I said, the game is a blend between fantasy sports and visual novel. The visual novel parts will be done with screenshots and hand-typed transcripts, while the gameplay will be done in videos. The game also includes a number of cute and/or gorgeous animated sections during the visual novel parts, and I will attempt to fit in animation where I can, marked with a “Gfy” link beneath still pictures.

: Any script succeeding this icon is the player, speaking in second person (“they all look toward you,” etc).

: Whereas any commentary succeeding this icon is by me, speaking about the game.

Like all Supergiant Games, the difficulty of the game is rather malleable by the player; on top of choosing a difficulty (which usually means how intense the AI can be during gameplay), the player can choose a number of items that boost their own performance, as well as choosing a number of inhibitors that either hinder them, or boost the enemy, in exchange for goodies, such as more experience.

To that end, I will be playing Pyre on the Heightened difficulty, which is the game’s hardest mode, and I will be using something called Titan Stars generally as often as I can in order to further increase the difficulty. I'll be taking every loss as they should come to me.

Participation

The Rites can only be performed with three characters at a time. Naturally, we’ll be getting more than three over the course of the plot. Before every Rite, I’ll ask which characters we’d like to see perform in the Rite. The first character you vote for will be taking the lead in the Rite. That’s important information, which is why I bolded it.

While on the way to perform the next Rite, we may come across forks in our paths. They generally won’t have any significant change on the overall story, but they will provide minor buffs or debuffs to our characters. I won’t be holding a vote on every fork, since that would eat up a ton of time, but I will take the fork that features whoever the thread is currently, or has most recently, voted/voting for, if they’re available.

Pyre, like all of Supergiant Games' videogames, is heavy on the plot, so, no spoilers, please.

The Let's Play Archive

Pyre

by Maple Leaf

Introduction

Table of Contents