Synchroma from Superbrothers dev is a platformer with randomized buttons

Indie dev Capybara Games recently showed off Synchroma, an experimental platformer that randomizes button commands.

1

Indie developer Capy Games, best known for their work on Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, has debuted an experimental (and ultra-hard) game titled Synchroma. It appears to have a lot in common with platformers, but it randomizes the button inputs each time you pick it up, and intentionally lacks a tutorial informing you which buttons correspond to which functions.

Polygon reports that Synchroma was the product of an internal game jam at Capy. It was the brainchild of programmer Renaud Bédard and artist/animator Nicolas Stephan. The idea was to build a game about physical memory and how well you can perform those complex tasks under a constant threat.

"Since we were both fans of hard games that required adaptation from the player, we wanted to give the player a really hard time ALL the time," Qiqo said. "This is when the sadistic idea of randomized controls came up. From there, it very quickly funneled into having a randomly assigned combinations of button presses for different actions on our character."

It is slightly less complex than it could have been, though, as Qiqo says at one point they considered letting the player speed up, slow down, or move left and right. He said that became "incredibly difficult," and time constraints prevented them from working out the kinks. Capy has no plans to bring it out, and Qiqo says they're "not sure how exactly we'll get it out there."

"There's a lot of pieces to that puzzle, and a lot of questions to answer," he said. "But after the positive response at the FanGamer X Attract Mode party... we definitely feel like we've got something fun on our hands."

Editor-In-Chief
Filed Under
From The Chatty
Hello, Meet Lola