‘Transistor’ Playable At PAX East Debut

A playable version of Transistor was debuted at PAX East today.

Transistor puts you in a futuristic computer system to fend for yourself, or so it seems. According to the screenshots, one might mistake it for being another Bastion clone. After all, Bastion was developed by the same people, your friendly neighborhood Supergiant Games.

However, after playing Transistor a while, it is reported to be very different. Though it plays different from Bastion, Transistor is every bit as impressive.

The character you play in Transistor is Red, a female protagonist who happens to be a singer. A what? Is this Revolution X (the Aerosmith shooter which made very little sense) all over again? Hardly.

Red is targeted by a group of assassins for reasons we don’t know, and after being attacked, she wakes up next to a dead man impaled with a sword resembling that of Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII. This is the same weapon she was attacked with, what looks to be a computer chip called Transistor. Speaking of Final Fantasy VII, this game uses a similar overhead perspective and graphic style, though much sharper. This game even looks to have a little bit of .Hack// influence in it.

Red’s voice is discovered gone, while the dead man’s voice and consciousness is stuck in the sword. The sword speaks to her, but the conversation is a bit one-sided.

Within seconds of taking Transistor, Red is attacked once again, this time by robotic enemies called Process.

Like most RPGs, this game starts you with basic attacks, but you gain more varied and powerful attacks as the game progresses. Two of the first attacks you will unlock, according to the PAX East demo, are an evade called Jaunt, and a projectile attack named Spark. One can only speculate that a lot of computer jargon is used in the naming of attacks and weapons in this game. There might even be parallels to the Matrix films.

What do you think about the hands-on overview of Transistor at PAX East?