CLASSIC GAME - Severed

How losing an arm helped us stay in touch with PS Vita

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INFO

PUB Drinkbox Studios

DEV Drinkbox Studios

RELEASED 2016

GET IT NOW £11.99, PS Vita Store

NEED TO KNOW

1 Severed was inspired by old dungeon crawling games such as Dungeon Master.

2 The game was designed to capture feelings of separation from home and family.

3 The 3D effect involves wrapping a cylinder that displays the background around the player. 

By 2016, PS Vita’s star was fading. But that didn’t stop Drinkbox Studios looking to complete a hattrick of releases on the platform, after Guacamelee! and Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack. While debuting a title on the handheld may have seemed a strange decision, Severed was a perfect fit and one the last great pages in Vita’s history.

One reason Severed stands out is that it’s not like much else, nor for that matter like anything Drinkbox had made before, aside from its familiarly angular visual style. While Guacamelee! and Mutant Blobs were side-scrolling platformers, Severed pulled us into the first-person perspective of its one-armed protagonist, Sasha, and a delirious, dungeon-crawling action RPG. Drinkbox also dumped the zany comic touches it had made its name with, opting instead for a grimly tragic tale sprinkled with dark humour.