
With all that covered, the competition starts. After firing off a wave, the biggest characters are easily defeated by the smaller ones, so there’s a tactical consideration in attacking and trying to eliminate characters. A fire wave can take out a character at range or while they’re on the move, but it also drains your character’s aura for a short time, leaving you vulnerable. In addition to auras, though, the characters can shoot waves of flame, with their attack sizes also determined by the size of the character. Wrecking your way through a game of Pyre is an exciting experience. That creates a bit of a rock-paper-scissors situation: the bigger characters have bigger auras, so they automatically beat the smaller characters, but bigger characters are also much slower and less maneuverable than their smaller counterparts.

Touching an enemy character with that aura temporarily removes them from the game, with a timer running down until they reappear.

Two players each control a team of three different characters: there’s a small, fast dog a medium-size, medium-speed person and a hulking horned humanoid creature.Įach character is surrounded by a fiery aura that’s determined by their size. The competitive game at the heart of Pyre takes a few minutes to pick up. And after trying Pyre’s multiplayer, it seems like that competition system is going to be a different experience that leverages a lot of Supergiant’s best ideas in fun new ways. Even though it’s also an action-RPG, much of it seems to be about slamming a ball into a fiery hoop. Pyre will have a single-player campaign as well, but from the sounds of things, its sport-style competition will be a big part of the game. It’s an intriguing change of pace for developer Supergiant Games, the team behind action-role-playing games Bastion and Transistor - games that designed as single-player experiences, with an emphasis on art style, fast-paced strategic play, and narrative. The goal: slam a magic ball into the other team’s ring to score points. There’s one good way to sum up the competitive multiplayer mode in Pyre: it’s kind of like a 3-on-3 version of the classic basketball game NBA Jam, except that, instead of basketball players, your team is made up of three wizards who can murder the other team with jets of flame.
