Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (2013)

This title is a unique indie adventure that tells the story of two brothers on a quest to find a cure for their ailing father. What makes it stand out is its innovative control scheme: you guide both siblings simultaneously, each mapped to one side of the controller. This mechanic is more than a gimmick, it ties directly into the game’s themes of cooperation, family, and loss, making the gameplay itself part of the storytelling. Visually, the game presents a beautiful, fairy tale-like world filled with both wonder and danger.

I particularly love the aesthetics of it, and I confess this was more of a standout to me than the unique control mechanics, at least at first. Its environments are varied and atmospheric, supported by a moving orchestral score that enhances the emotional weight of the journey. The story is told without traditional dialogue, relying instead on gestures, tone, and environmental cues, which makes its impact even more universal. And I enjoyed this very much, it really makes you pay especial attention to what is happening, not that the story is particularly complex though.

The game is short, lasting around three hours, but this brevity works in its favor, it delivers a focused, emotionally powerful narrative without unnecessary filler. Some people may find the controls tricky at first, but most adapt quickly, and the payoff is worth the effort. Overall, this game is a heartfelt and memorable experience that blends gameplay and story in a way few titles manage. It’s not just a game you play, but one you feel, and its ending lingers long after the credits roll.

Josef Fares has something in his brain about the way co-op games work that seems infinitely interesting to me. We can see it in A Way Out and It Takes Two, but is even more intriguing in the weirdly named Brothers: A Tales of Two Sons, a co-op game that you play with yourself.

This is not the first game that asks you to control two characters with each analogue of the controller, but In my knowledge it is the first that does it in a narrative adventure. This allow very interesting narrative readings about the way different characters work together and mechanical readings about how the brain tries to work focusing on two different tasks.

I feel that I have an essay in me about this. But this is not the time. Maybe I need to replay the other Fares' works to realize exactly want I want to say about all of this, because I really feel there's something there.

Sad fact: I started playing this because I was scheduled to get the remake for review on launch day. When the day came, I didn't get the review code, but an email from the PR telling me that she was laid off of her job 😔.

I remember wanting to play this game when it came out on X-Box Live Arcade. I didn't get it then and it's been sort of on my list forever. After years of seeing it on "Best Video Game Story" lists, I finally got it free through Epic Games and got around to trying it out.

I was....underwhelmed

Avoiding spoilers, the game is very pretty and the way the scenes are framed is very cinematic and I feel like this would have been amplified by a lot 10 years ago. But the game play is super linear, like VERY. Like, am I really playing a game or just on a very long Haunted Mansion style ride. No meaningful decisions to make, no gameplay that is remotely challenging.

If you have never controlled two characters with two sticks before, that might be a puzzle for your brain, but having played a ton of Schizoid back in the day, that wasn't a problem at all.

If you really loved Limbo or Inside, maybe you'll like this too. They all seem like trivial platformer games with a weird backdrop that is supposed to carry the whole game.

The environments do get interesting, but similar to the above where it's may be strange, but mostly unexplained. There are some optional side things you can do, but they don't really have any consequences on anything (but maybe add some weight to the adventure, so it's definitely not a negative, just not the positive it could be).

As far as story goes, again avoiding spoilers. There are some interesting story beats and definitely some things you may not expect, but the flow and reasoning behind them wasn't satisfying for me. I felt there were some moments where I was supposed to feel some emotion or other (fear, happy, sad, anger, whatever), but I mostly just felt like I had been set up to feel that way without any meaningful character development or reason to have a stake in the thing that was happening (with one pretty big exception which comes very late in the game and would have been better if framed differently in my opinion)

I keep playing old games that I've let get too hyped in my brain, so part of that is on me. But if I can save 2 people from spending the time on something that really doesn't need to be experienced by every other gamer, maybe me playing it will still be a net positive.

I should’ve played this sooner.

Brothers is a short, top-down adventure tale that I don’t see talked about often enough. Its most standout feature is, by far, it original mechanics: you control both brothers simultaneously with your controller, an intriguing concept that actually worked a lot better than I thought once I got used to it - although I can’t help but feel this was also a missed opportunity for a great couch co-op experience. The level design and game polish are good enough that the challenging mechanics never become a nuisance, even if some moments are clearly more difficult than others and the camera angels could’ve been a bit better on occasion.

There’s a lot more to talk about here, however, and I feel focusing uniquely on its novel control concept would be doing the game a disservice. Brothers is, at its core, an emotional journey: you venture out with it, you smile with it, you tense up with it, and maybe you’ll end up crying with it - I’ll admit, the ending kind of got to me. And it’s precisely its emotional tone that truly sets it apart from similar games. The story is a take on a ‘holy grail’ type quest by Josef Fares, who I later found to have also been involved with It Takes Two and A Way Out. One of the things I did not see coming was the Arabic-inspired language Fares created for the game, which caught me by surprise at first, yet quickly proved itself to be a perfect match for the beautiful art style and fantasy atmosphere it was superimposed upon. The sound design as a whole, in fact, is an aspect more than worthy of a mention, and the music in particular is able to invoke an emotional response just on its own. This is, above all, what Brothers does remarkable well: it weaves itself into your perception in a way that makes it very difficult for you not to react towards it with warm - and sad - feelings. There are several mini-stories throughout your short adventure, all of which contribute to the world building and the richness of the narrative tapestry. They’re not related to the story as such, but they’re related to the journey, undoubtedly the main anchor of the game. All of this is captured by very accomplished animations (particularly impressive for a game that came out with little to no fanfare from such a small team).

I have a very easy time recommending this to every single person, even with the unusual control scheme, unless you’re someone who abhors puzzle/problem-solving elements in games (I’d describe it as a lighter version of Unravel Two in this regard). A Tale of Two Sons is a heartwarming, heartbreaking fantasy tale about overcoming grief and challenge worthy of every single bit of recognition it received, and then some. A surprising and very enjoyable experience. 8/10

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sonsissa ohjaat kahta veljestä, jotka lähtevät hakemaan loukkaantuneelle isälleen lääkettä. Toista veljeksistä ohjaat vasemmalla tatilla ja olkanäppäimellä, ja toista veljestä oikealla tatillla ja olkanäppäimellä. Tämä dynamiikka saa käännettyä aivot solmuun välillä, mutta mukana on ihan hauskoja pieniä puzzleiluja rakennettu tämän dynamiikan ympärille. Osa sen sijaan on tehty hieman väkisin, joten aivan täydellinen pelimekaniikka ei lopulta ole.

Verrattuna moniin muihin indiepeleihin pelissä on yksi parhaimmista tarinoista. Pienestä budjetista huolimatta hahmojen tunteita ja dynamiikkaa saadaan välitettyä pelaajalle hienolla tavalla.Grafiikat eivät oikeastaan tarvitse olla sen parempia. Peli piti kiinni otteessaan tiukasti ja pelasinkin pelin kahdessa pätkässä heti alkuvuodesta 2022.

Farezin ensimmäinen kosketus pelimaailmaan oli samantien melkoinen onnistuminen. Pelin olisi voinut pelata nykyään myös puhtaana kaksinpelinä, mutta tietyt kohtaukset voivat toimia paremminkin yksinpelinä. Peli oli mukava kokemus ja suosittelen ehdottomasti kokeilemaan peliä.

Hyvä 3/5

TLDR: Don't play, buggy.

This could be a quirky, simple indie puzzle-platformer if it was not riddled with bugs. Near the end of the second chapter I hit a glitch that left me with no option but to restart the entire chapter. Same thing early in the third chapter. Maybe if the game were action-packed it would not be so bad, but with essentially no action it is not worth it.

That said, if you have a tolerance for bugs and a willingness to restart chapters over again just to complete a simple puzzle, I actually enjoyed the game until giving up as too frustratingly buggy.

Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons is a refreshing experience at first. The concept of controlling two characters independently using both your analog sticks really messes with your head in the first few minutes. But once you've got a good grip on the mechanics, the puzzles that come across you are a sheer joy to accomplish. Its complexity in the simplicity is just what puts a smile on your face.

This paired with a sad tale of struggle and companionship, Brothers will definitely be at the top of your mind for a while once you're done. If you're looking for a short, simple, experience - look no further.

This game was really something special. I can't say I've played a game recently that combined unique mechanics, eye-pleasing imagery, creative scenarios and emotional impact in quite the same way.

I read some reviews that said the game mechanics were nothing groundbreaking, so I can only speak for myself – I've personally never played a game where you can control two characters in this kind of control scheme before, and I thought it was really cool. I've played games where a single player has to control two characters cooperatively, but not where each of your hands controls one character, essentially. It was easier to get used to than I thought, but I noticed how my brain got a little scrambled if I accidentally put big brother to the right of the screen and little brother to the left and tried to make them move in the right direction with the opposite hand lol. It was a new and interesting experience for me.

The puzzles were fun and I thought the single-player co-op idea was used in an innovative way – while there were the basic scenarios like having one character pull a lever to give the other character access to an area, or having to control each oar separately to steer a rowboat, there were also more unique ones like having the brothers take turns decoying and distracting an enemy while the other runs to safety, or carrying both ends of a long object and trying to navigate it through narrow spaces. Scenarios that two people working together might face in real life or in a TV show or movie but that you don't see as much in games (at least not where you're controlling two separate characters at the same time).

The fairytale-esque world the game takes place in was also really delightful. The environment was used well – they could have just had all the obstacles be fallen trees or rocks or similar predictable things but I didn't quite expect to have to move the bloody corpse of a 1,000-ft-tall giant out of the way. And I liked how in addition to having the brothers cooperate you had to cooperate with various NPCs as well, like the troll thing that throws you places and stands across a gap so you can walk across its shoulders.

All that said, the biggest thing for me about this game that I will probably remember forever is the relationship between the two brothers and the climax and end of the story. Before I get to the spoilers, I really loved how the cooperation directly played into the strengths and weaknesses of each brother. Maybe the little brother (Naiee) being able to fit into small spaces and the big brother (Naia) being strong enough to pull big levers is predictable, but the fact that you have to have Naiee hold onto his brother to swim because he's afraid of the water, and how that plays into the backstory, was different and kind of touching. I also like little details like how there's a big horn randomly in part of the game and when Naia blows into it it makes a loud sound but if Naiee does he can't blow hard enough lol.

Onto the spoilers ...

The climax and final scenes of this game are the most cruel, crushing, heart-shattering, devastating emotional gut-punches I've experienced in a game in a long time, if ever. I was mentally begging for a cop-out, I didn't care if it was a cheap, cheesy "It's a miracle!" ending where everyone lived happily ever after. But we didn't get that and not giving us that was probably the right decision because ... phwoo.

The very concept of having to control little Naiee dragging his brother's corpse into a grave and burying it ... no words. There's a somewhat adjacent scene in a playable part of Homestuck (not the same scenario or context but draws a similar emotion) but the Brothers scene beats it by about a mile. Game-wise, it's a very simple task, it's not challenging at all. The challenge is psychological. It's something that you don't want to do, but you know you have to – just like Naiee.

With the sheer shock of the twist, and the build-up of the game investing you in the brothers' connection by focusing all your efforts on their cooperation, the raw emotion I felt at the end of this story is something I only get once in a blue moon from a video game. Not to mention, if the burying scene doesn't get to you, the part where Naiee can only swim on his own when you press Naia's action button will have you bawling.

Overall, this game was great for me even without the emotional storyline, although I will say, although there was enough variety in the puzzles to keep me interested, it could be pretty easy at times. I only died a handful of times, so if there's something negative I could say it would be that it's too easy.

But the story and emotions and deeper connection between the gameplay mechanics and the essence of the plot really did it for me. This is another game that's leaving the Origin Basic vault in a couple weeks so if you have Origin Basic, I highly recommend it. Regular price (on Steam) is about $15 and I would say it's worth that much if you want the emotional experience but not so much for the gameplay if you want something that's exciting and challenging. I'll also note that it's a pretty short game, I finished it in about 2 hours (but just sort of went straight through doing very little extra).

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a game that I've been somewhat interested in playing for years, but never got around to actually completing until I picked it up in a sale.

I didn't know what to really expect when I started playing Brothers - in fact, I originally thought I ended up with a foreign copy since I had no clue the characters didn't speak English!

I 100% completed Brothers in about 3 hours, and my opinion on the game changed dramatically from start to finish. Originally I thought the game was bad - while I greatly enjoyed the art style, I wasn't particularly invested in the story, I thought the controls were terrible and the puzzles were extremely simple.

By the time I finished Brothers, however, most of my opinions had changed. Each chapter introduced a completely different environment, with (sometimes even radically!) different mechanics, and a slight ramping up in the difficulty of the puzzles. While nothing ever got too complicated to solve, I did find myself needing to concentrate at some parts. And as the story continued, I found myself more and more invested in the relationship between the two brothers. Their interactions and antics were both funny and adorable - you could tell that they cared about each other greatly. Even the smallest of details with how they combined to solve the puzzles in front of them showed it.

Unfortunately, I feel like Brothers has a few major flaws. The first one being something I noticed from the very beginning - the controls are terrible. Maybe I'm just uncoordinated, but from the first to the final second, I found myself struggling to properly control both brothers at the same time. I would always end up going the wrong direction or releasing the wrong trigger. And the second flaw is I had no clue what the hell was going on in the game other then the basic premise. Each location would be filled with more and more strange elements, and with zero explanation it just left me feeling confused.

In the end though, despite its few flaws, Brothers was a fantastic experience. I very rarely get affected by the games I play, but I found myself caring for both of the brothers and cheering them on as they continued on their journey through the world. The plot twist at the end was completely unexpected on my part, and I kept waiting for it to end up being a trick. When I finally accepted that it wasn't, I felt real sadness for the little brother and the losses he'd suffered in so short a time.

I think I absolutely got my money's worth ($5 on sale) out of it, and I would definitely recommend it to others. But because of its incredibly short length and especially the awkward controls, I would say to wait for a sale and try to pick it up at $5 or $10. I don't believe its value is greater then that.

I picked up the Brothers game based on its good online reviews, expecting it to be a few hours of good fun. It turned out to be way more than that to my pleasant surprise. Here’s a brief overview of the game’s narrative: The game starts with one of the brothers kneeling head down in front of the grave of his mother. It’s a peaceful and serene scene under a tree overlooking the sea. He is interrupted by his brother holding their sick father. It turns out that the only way to cure the father is to go to a remote place for some healing water. This is all communicated through an obscure language (unintelligible), and the communication is clear since the messages and steps the player needs to take are relatively simple and explained through characters’ gestures (and in the nuances of the uttered sounds). According to an interview with the game’s creator and director, Joseph Fares (his first game), the language is strongly inspired by Arabic (not surprising since he was born in Lebanon). I think there was even a whole Arabic word that was used at the beginning, when the older brother is calling his younger brother Nayee to come, and he says “Nayee, ta3a”. “Ta3a” means come in Lebanese slang (and it is “ta3al” in proper Arabic).

For more, I had posted my impressions here: https://madfad.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/brothers-a-tale-of-two-sons-impressions/

I really, really tried with this one. I dig Team Ico games (which this is often compared to), and I can appreciate when games use their mechanics and even their control scheme to reinforce narrative themes.

It just didn't click for me.

Visually, the world felt vibrant and realized, but that feeling faded the more I tried to interact with it. Aside from one or two details per chapter, environments felt staged and linear.

While initially I found controlling Naiee and Naia novel, the mechanic soon grew tiresome. My favorite challenges required controlling both characters independently to solve a puzzle, flip a switch, etc... but these seemed far outnumbered by challenges asking you to complete the same task twice over, or challenges requiring you to just hold down one or both triggers while moving in a certain direction. I also felt like I spent too much time wandering around the edges of playable areas, tapping the trigger to find that magic interaction point, not unlike click and point adventures of old.

The story itself did not compel me to move forward. I'm the oldest of two brothers in real life, but I felt detached from these characters. Their story isn't ambiguous enough for me to fill in the blanks in interesting ways (a la Ico), yet the details are still too vague to be compelling in and of themselves. Without that baseline level of interest, moments designed to shock or even charm me lacked much impact.

And yes, I found the voices annoying... well, really just one voice. One word even. "Naiee" is like a noise your real-life brother would invent just to irritate you by repeating it over and over.

Okay, so, elephant in the room: Everyone seems to love this game. It's got like a 90% rating on Metacritic. That probably means I'm wrong about it. But I'm using Grouvee to journal my own game-playing experience, and this one wasn't for me. But by all means, give it a whirl if it intrigues you. Seriously, what do I know?

Brothers is an odd game; it doesn't quite fit into any of the normal genres, in my opinion. I guess the closest would be "puzzle-platformer". What really makes it shine, though, is just how well thought out it is.

You control both brothers at once, which I imagine is way easier on a gamepad. I played on a keyboard. It felt awkward but almost entirely because I am so not ambidextrous. But the point is, the game is about the brothers working together and the controls directly reflect that. I thought that having only one button besides moving to "interact" might get old when I started out but it worked stupendously. Each brother has a few skills that the other brother does not have mostly based on their physical stature. But there are some that go beyond that (younger brother has to hold on to older brother while swimming) .

I wouldn't say the plot is deep but I still found myself caring for the characters, particularly the younger brother. As time went on I actually felt some genuine concern at one point where the brothers are briefly separated floating down a river. That surprised me.

The other parts of the game were well done also. The graphics looked really nice for the world they meant to convey, the character models were pretty good, the music was fantastic, and I really liked the world and tried to interact with everything I could. My favorite part were the benches which are just placed at scenic spots where you can just sit for a few seconds and enjoy whatever part of the world you are in.

So now I have to talk about the ending, which is major spoilers. I really liked it and think it is the best possible ending they could have made. Identifying more with the younger, I was joking the entire game like when they're standing near a cliff, "just push him off, haha". And at the end, I felt like a horrible, horrible person. That means the game did a really good job. (And possibly that I am indeed a horrible, horrible person.) Additionally I kept finding myself in denial that this is how the game would actually end, not because I think all endings should be happy but because most games can't truly commit to such an ending. Up until the very end I kept thinking that they would bring him back or allude to the fact that he was alive, and I definitely was in denial about the game giving you a short playable scene of you burying your own brother. But they didn't bring him back and while part of me felt sad, the rest of me felt satisfied because I feel like they did a good job of not only having a tragic ending but resolving it well.

And lastly, I just want to say that having to use the older brother's action button to swim at the end of the game was absolutely fantastic. It sounds so incredibly small but really means so incredibly much after you've played the entirety of the game with both of them.

I think people will either get it or not; it won't appeal to everybody. It doesn't have particularly compelling gameplay (i.e. the platforming or puzzle solving is nothing revolutionary) but I'd hardly call it "just a walking simulator". You are in the world and directly involved, having agency instead of just being a "glorified cameraman". Like I said earlier, I feel like the devs planned this game so well for every single aspect to mesh well together into a 3 hour experience that you probably won't soon forget.

Good god this one hit me hard.

I spent the first ten minutes feeling that Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons was too game-y, that the mechanics were blatant enough to ruin any attempt at atmosphere. That faded about twenty minutes in, by which point the lil' Simlish-speaking brothers were growing near and dear to me, and I felt invested in seeing them through on their adventure. An hour in and the world was charming, kind of like the immersive Scandinavian fantasy realm Skyrim wishes it could offer. An hour and a half, and the charm was struck through with bits and pieces of horror and concern. By the time I finished I was pretty much a screaming, teary-eyed emotional wreck.

Bear in mind that the game's content struck very close to home for me, and I imagine that fact is magnifying the impact tremendously, but even so I adore everything that's been put together here. I've been a fan of Thatgamecompany's work for years, and Starbreeze Studios' Brothers manages to evoke everything Flower or Journey pulled off, but in a dark and haunted way that feels just right for the Scandinavian indie game scene. Do yourself a favor and set aside a good 3-4 hour block so you can enjoy Brothers all in one go.