Game review: Severed – rite-of-passage story about loss, grief and one-armed swordsmanship
Set in a frightening, mysterious world, Severed asks if an ordinary woman turned warrior can conquer her fears and come to grips with the unknown fates of her family
Early in the game Severed, one of the more striking images you’ll see this year in a video game appears. A woman of mixed-race descent stands before a mirror, her yellow dress bloody, her arm a stub and her eyes wide in shock.
The world is bright and blocky – a handcrafted-looking universe that seems constructed of paper, but immediately the tone drifts towards melancholic. The art almost appears lifted from a Dia de los Muertos display, and though this is the beginning of the journey for young Sasha, it also feels like the beginning of an end.
Welcome to one woman’s nightmare.
It gets only worse. Sasha’s family is missing, their belongings scattered around this universe – one that feels like death sprung to life. Oh, and since it is a video game, there’s an assortment of monsters – box like-skulls, multi-armed monkey-like creatures, a giant blinking eye on a gelatinous purple pedestal – who are after Sasha.
Severed, from Toronto independent studio DrinkBox, is a touch-control, role-play game. There are dungeons and monsters and magic. But the game, available now for Sony’s hand-held device the Vita, is also about loss and grief as much as it is about Sasha’s one-armed ability to wield a sword.
Set in a frightening, mysterious world, the game asks if an ordinary woman-turned-warrior can conquer her fears and come to grips with the unknown fates of her family.
“Sasha is such an interesting character. I really like her,” says DrinkBox’s Augusto Quijano, one of the project leads on the game. “There’s not a lot of interactions, but she seems like someone who’s just constantly internalising things. She’s quiet, but there’s something brooding about her personality.”
When Severed shows us a close-up of her face, Sasha looks unwavering, as if trying to project an age beyond her years. Little is spoken in the game, and the title’s sparse but dooming score contrasts with the vivid and colourful look of the world. The mood becomes darker as family trinkets are found and Severed hints throughout at a grim fate for Sasha’s family.