With its unique control scheme, I like to think of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons as a “rubbing your belly, while patting you head” simulator.
A kind of co-operative single player game, Brothers manages to represent a sibling relationship through the controller itself. Two characters can be controlled using each half of a controller, thus creating both a sense of unity between the brothers at the same time as representing the autonomy of each character simply through the act of controlling them as individuals and as a unit.
This week we explore how this 2-in-1 control scheme plays out mechanically and narratively in this indie darling from last year.
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Our podcast contributors:
G. Christopher Williams is the Multimedia Editor at PopMatters.com. You can find his weekly updates featured at 8-bit Confessional blog.
In addition to writing for PopMatters, Nick Dinicola is also a regular contributor to the Moving Pixels blog and appears regularly on the Game Hounds podcast.
Eric Swain is a frequent contributor to the Moving Pixels podcast and maintains his own blog on gaming, The Game Critique.
Erik Kersting contributes weekly to the Moving Pixels blog on Mondays or Tuesdays.