I'm not exactly sure what I expected from my first 30 minutes with Pyre , Supergiant's follow-up to their fantastic first two games Bastion and Transistor, but it sure as hell wasn't this. But honestly, I'm every bit as mesmerized by this latest weird, beautiful world that the studio has created as I was three years ago when I first played Transistor.

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Pyre is a lot of things. It's a poetic, 4th-wall-breaking adventure that tells its fantasy tale through the mechanics of a visual novel. It's an RPG that has you leveling up your three heroes (a horn-laden woman, a dashing rogue, and a cool dog-man with a nice mustache) and investing in skill trees that felt very reminiscent of Transistor. But perhaps most strangely, its battles legitimately feel like a bizarre mix of Transistor, Dota, and Rocket League. Yep, you read that last one correctly.So story first -- Pyre continues Supergiant's amazing ability to conjure up a fantasy setting that exudes a wonderful sense of style and tone. The three wandering travelers that you control all exhibited distinct personalities in my brief time with the game, reminiscent of The Kid from Bastion or Red from Transistor. Despite their playful banter, they contain a deep-rooted sadness -- think a mash-up of Canterbury Tales and Dante's Inferno. The caravan that you and your ragtag group use to travel about the fantastical, purgatory countryside can be examined at any time, and the way I moved a cursor around to interact with objects (blowing out a set of candles, or softly knocking over a stack of books) added a great sense of immersion into the whole thing.Pyre does a really interesting thing with its dialogue and narration, in that certain proper nouns -- be it a name, a place, or an item -- can be highlighted and expanded upon in a similar way of clicking a hyperlink on Wikipedia. This natural, fluid system gives the player full control over how deep down the game's lore rabbit hole they want to go. Likewise, certain key phrases can by highlighted and lead to a decision -- when the 4th-wall broke for the first time, I was given the choice of whether I wanted the characters to refer to me (the player is known as "The Reader" in Pyre) using male, female, or gender-neutral pronouns. Very cool, and something I've never really experienced before in a game.At two points throughout my story-heavy time with Pyre, I was thrusted into the game's combat scenarios. This is where things got really weird in a really good way. In a way, the combat feels like a natural progression from Bastion and Transistor -- battles occur from the same overhead perspective, and you have to keep a close eye on your abilities and their cool-down periods as you gracefully glide across the arena. But the goal here isn't to simply kill your enemies. Each encounter is based around a glowing orb at the center of the map, and a pair of pyres on either end that you want to defend, and attack respectively. Each team's pyre has a set amount of HP, which goes down when you ostensibly grab the orb and score a goal in your opponent's fire. As I was describing this to IGN's Max Scoville, he said, "So it's Quidditch?" Yeah...it kinda is.You can only move one of your three characters at a time during the match, and I quickly found myself swapping back and forth to maximize specific skills. Smaller characters could dash quickly across the map, but scoring a goal with them is only worth a single point. Larger characters are far less agile, but their goals are worth three points. I know, it's super weird to be talking about a Supergiant game's combat using sports terminology, but after a few minutes of playing through Pyre, I was totally sold on its weird, beautiful, original world.

Marty Sliva is a Senior Editor at IGN. He once ate a whole blueberry. Follow him on Twitter @McBiggitty.