Introducing Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure (PS4/Vita) (Patreon)

Hey!

Today, we’re super excited to finally reveal the first Sacred Symbols video game. It’s called Twin Breaker: A Sacred Symbols Adventure, and we’re aiming to release it in the first quarter of 2020 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. We intend on charging $9.99, which will net you both the PS4 and Vita versions in one fell swoop. You’ll also get two Trophy lists to jump into, each with its own Platinum.

Twin Breaker was (well, still is being) developed by my friend Barry Johnson and his Canadian development studio Lilymo Games. This is Lilymo’s third title: Barry has already launched the 2D platformer Perils of Baking and the arcade shooter Habroxia, both available as we speak on PS4 and Vita. Barry and I have known each other in some capacity for years (he was one of my very first friends on PSN, in fact), but when he joined the indie dev community on PlayStation, he and I started talking more. I played and enjoyed Perils -- a worthy first effort from a one-man team -- and when Habroxia came out, I was (and am) quite keen on it.

I did a Let’s Play for Habroxia and talked about it on Sacred Symbols, but behind-the-scenes, Barry and I were starting to have deeper conversations about game design, and I -- merely as a critic and long-time gamer -- provided him a lot of what were apparently useful critiques and suggestions that I thought would make the game better. He agreed.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, we decided to make a game together, and our partnership was forged, though interestingly enough, this wasn’t even the first project we considered. (That comes later.) With Twin Breaker, Barry knew me well enough to know that I have a soft spot for brick breakers, and he revealed to me that he was working on one of his own, one with a little twist: Players would control multiple paddles in conjunction with each other while keeping the experience on a 2D field. In other words: Something fresh, but not overly complex. Accessibility is at the heart of our game. You have enough 25 (and 50, and 100) hour romps with sharp difficulty to keep you busy. This certainly isn't that.

But I wanted to in some way differentiate Twin Breaker on a second level, apart from its unique approach to gameplay. I wanted to give context to the events of the game, even though the gameplay doesn’t really need (or even demand!) context. It felt like a meta enough idea to be interesting, and I knew that a subsection of our audience would really love it. It’s been an awesome experience for me to flesh out a strange tale of first contact, led by our two daring protagonists and their powerful ships: Greetings and Salutations. Giving an old-school-style game a story at all was really inspired, in a lot of ways, but Atlus’ wonderful Catherine, which gave Q*Bert meaning. So why can’t Arkanoid have meaning, too?!

In the months to come, we’ll have much more to say about Twin Breaker, including a specific release date, a Trophy list reveal, a Let’s Play or two, an episode of Sacred Symbols+, and another trailer. In the meantime, we thank you so much for your excitement! We’re thrilled to be doing this, and to give the Sacred Symbols audience a fun, replayable, and affordable PS4 and Vita game, particularly as our precious Vita wanes.

More soon! -Colin