An arty isometric indie game with RPG elements that features a silent protagonist guided by a sole narrator? No, it’s not Bastion, it’s Supergiant’s latest game, Transistor.

Don’t mistake the observed similarities as criticism. Bastion was a creative and enjoyable experience, marred only by repetition. There’s nothing wrong with having a comfort zone, and Transistor is evidence that Supergiant Games are honing their craft.

Against the backdrop of a beautiful sci-fi world tinged with melancholy, our protagonist Red endures an attempt on her life. Instead of striking her down, the assassin’s sword strikes a man, and subsequently his personality, along with Red’s voice, is consumed by it. The sword is called the ‘Transistor’.

Red then wields the mechanised weapon on a mission to expose and defeat those responsible for her failed assassination. The voice in the sword acts as her only guide against the ‘The Process’, an army of robots commanded by her aggressors who are tearing the city of Cloudbank apart without mercy.

The story told in Transistor is purposely vague, placing a lot of trust in the player’s perception. It’s fogginess makes it incredibly thought-provoking, and I found myself taking immense pleasure in piecing together bits of information and coming to my own conclusions about what they might mean.

However, whether you’ll enjoy Transistor’s story depends heavily on whether you can enjoy an ‘arty-farty’ narrative that withholds its answers. Even as the credits rolled, I didn’t feel as if I knew exactly why things had happened as they had. It reaches a definite resolution, but the reasons are blurry.

Despite the abstract nature of its story, Transistor’s combat has wide appeal. It hits that beautiful sweet-spot of being accessible from the off whilst being complex enough to hook the player for multiple playthroughs.

Like Bastion, the main character can use a small selection of abilities in real-time, but Transistor mixes things up massively by introducing the ability to stop time and plan out moves. Basically, during combat the player can freeze everything, stack a list of moves and abilities, planning who to strike and when, and then like a wind-up toy, the player lets Red go, at which point she zips around the battlefield performing the stacked actions.

It gives each battle a layer of strategic complexity that elevates it past most combat systems. By the end of the game, the player is painstakingly preparing each turn, legislating for extraneous variables like the movement of enemies.

This mechanic could carry most games by itself, but to make things even more interesting, Transistor also has a complicated ability system. Through-out the game, Red unlocks ‘functions’ which have several uses. They can be used as an ability themselves, perhaps giving Red a long-ranged attack. They could also be used to upgrade an existing move, perhaps extending the reach of one of Red’s other attacks. Or finally, they could be utilised in a ‘passive slot’, giving Red an overall boost to range.

It makes the game endlessly replayable. Being able to constantly tinker with Red’s functions means that every battle is potentially different. You could play the game twice and use a completely different set of functions each time, soliciting a whole new experience. Indeed, as I finished the game, the ‘Recursion’, a new game+ mode in which Red can start the adventure again with all her old abilities, tempted me to do exactly that.

Complicating things even further are the ‘limiters’. As well as implementing functions, the player can also impose limiters on Red, making each battle harder but rewarding with more experience. These can involve making enemies stronger, or constricting Red’s abilities. My advise would be to ignore the limiters on your first playthrough (unless you find the game too easy), and experiment with them when you play the game again.

Transistor features an innovative system whereby when you lose all your health, instead of instantly having to go back to the last checkpoint, you lose an installed function for a certain amount of checkpoints. You only get a game over if you lose all of your installed functions, which never happened to me once.

It’s an ingenious mechanic because it’s tempting when playing Transistor to grow accustomed to three or four functions and stick with them. By taking your favourite functions away, it forces you to experiment, meaning that when your old functions are returned, you can craft your own mixture, honing your play-style.

All of this complexity is tied together by the amazing setting of the Rapture-esque ‘Cloudbank’. It’s a world that has been carefully crafted to be beautiful to look at whilst hinting at sombre undertones.

With a wealth of flavour text to read through in the form of interactive news boards, Cloudbank and its inhabitants are mysteries themselves to be unravelled. Another ingenious addition is that extra information can also be unlocked by using functions. It adds further reward to experimentation.

As a mixture of intelligent story-telling, engrossing world-building and complex combat, this is near enough a perfect game. Bastion may have had a better narrator (dat voice!), but Transistor is better in every other conceivable way. Proving they’re no one-hit wonders, Supergiant Games have shown they have a bright future ahead of them.

10/10

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