“Before DigiPen I was actually trying to be a writer,” says Nick Cameron, the game’s producer and one of its designers. Though many of these interactions have no effect on gameplay, the tidbits of story they offer slowly and purposefully flesh out the game’s world. Story is a huge part of The Blade in the Bark - the game is liberally peppered with glowing runes that rest next to interactive objects. “But few are so unfortunate to find themselves trapped at the edge of a sunset, forced to enter a forsaken realm of eternal night.” “Many adventurers have trekked through mountain caves and over frosted fields, searching for secret treasures and magics,” the game’s opening sequence offers. The thing that was really important from day one was world building.” The game follows an unidentified heroine into the “frozen north.” She finds herself conscripted by a mysterious “God Tree” and forced to serve as its champion, armed with nothing but a shock of bright red hair, some magic runes, and a sword that only appears in the circles of moonlight scattered throughout the game’s tense, enmeshing environs. As YouTube indie game reviewer GSDBoxer put it, in a narrated play-through of the game, “I can’t believe this is from students!”
Though it’s much smaller in scope, it has comparable polish to those indie hits. The game is a lovingly crafted pixel-art fantasy adventure à la Hyper Light Drifter or Titan Souls, both of which The Blade in the Bark’s creators, Team Isogon, cite as influences. Lots and lots of pixels, put to good use in ludicrously detailed pixel birch trees, menacing pixel wolves, and even gently falling flakes of pixel snow.
Instead of uncannily realistic textures and dynamic lighting, there are pixels. The Blade in the Bark is a visually arresting game, but not in the same way that a flashy AAA title might be.
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