''Severed'' is an

action-adventure video game The action-adventure genre is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres. Typically, pure adventure games have situational problems for the player to solve to complete a storyli ...

developed and published by

DrinkBox Studios Drinkbox Studios Inc. is a Canadian video game developer based in Toronto. The company was founded in April 2008 by Chris Harvey, Ryan MacLean and Graham Smith, three programmers previously employed by Pseudo Interactive, which closed earlier t ...

for the PlayStation Vita,

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

Wii U The Wii U ( ) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo as the successor to the Wii. Released in late 2012, it is the first eighth-generation video game console and competed with Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4. Th ...

, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch. It was released on April 26, 2016, in North America and Europe for the PlayStation Vita and it was released on

and

on September 22, 2016. It was released on Nintendo 3DS in Europe on September 22, 2016, North America on October 13, 2016. It was released in Japan on December 28, 2016.

Development

On April 14, 2014,

announced ''Severed'' in association with video game blog

Destructoid ''Destructoid'' is a website that was founded as a video game-focused blog in March 2006 by Yanier Gonzalez, a Cuban-American cartoonist and author. Enthusiast Gaming acquired the website in 2017, and sold it to Gamurs Group in 2022. History ...

. Because of its heavy focus on touchscreen controls, ''Severed'' was anticipated as a game for mobile devices, though

was considering versions for other devices like the PlayStation Vita, the Nintendo 3DS and the

, too. Motion-sensing technologies like

PlayStation Move is a motion game controller developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Initially released in 2010 for use with the PlayStation 3 home video game console, its compatibility was later expanded to its successor, the PlayStation 4 in 2013, its Pla ...

and Kinect were considered. However, the developers did not confirm the game for any of these platforms at that time.

was aiming for a release of ''Severed'' in 2015. At the PlayStation Experience 2014 in December,

announced that ''Severed'' would be released on PlayStation Vita, continuing the trend of DrinkBox' previous games of releasing on PlayStation platforms first. After being delayed,

announced on April 11, 2016, that ''Severed'' would be released for PlayStation Vita on April 26. On June 13, 2016, during the

Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016 The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016 (E3 2016) was the 22nd E3, during which several hardware manufacturers and software developers and publishers from the video game industry presented new and upcoming products to the attendees, primarily re ...

, ''Severed'' was announced for both the

and Nintendo 3DS. The game supports

cross-buy Cross-buy is a feature of some digital distribution systems available across multiple device platforms, where users who purchase a license to a specific piece of software are able to use the versions of the software for different device classes at ...

, so if a user buys it on the

, they also get the game free on the 3DS. The Nintendo Switch version released on August 8, 2017.

Music

The soundtrack for Severed was created as a collaboration between the Juno and Polaris-nominated band

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan Yamantaka // Sonic Titan is a Canadian experimental music and performance art collective.

and Pantayo, and was created with the support of

FACTOR Factor, a Latin word meaning "who/which acts", may refer to: Commerce * Factor (agent), a person who acts for, notably a mercantile and colonial agent * Factor (Scotland), a person or firm managing a Scottish estate * Factors of production, suc ...

and the Canadian Government. Severed's soundtrack took home an award for Best Musical Score from the Canadian Videogame Awards

Reception

The game received "generally favorable" reviews, according to video game

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

. It was named Apple's 2016 iPad Game of the Year.

References

External links

* {{Authority control 2016 video games Action-adventure games Apple Design Awards recipients DrinkBox Studios games Flyhigh Works games Indie games IOS games Nintendo 3DS eShop games Nintendo Switch games PlayStation Vita games Single-player video games Video games developed in Canada Video games featuring female protagonists Wii U eShop games