Transistor is Supergiant Games’ 2014 action role-playing game about Red, a singer crossing Cloudbank with a talking sword while the city is consumed by the Process.
Transistor begins after an assassination attempt leaves Red voiceless and places the title weapon in her hands. The city of Cloudbank is already collapsing into abstraction, and the people behind the attack are losing control of the Process, the robotic force rewriting the city block by block.
The combat mixes immediate action with a planning layer called Turn(). Red can move, line up attacks, and queue abilities while time is frozen, then watch the plan resolve in a burst before surviving the cooldown. That structure gives the game a tactical rhythm without abandoning Supergiant’s real-time feel.
Its ability system is built around Functions, powers drawn from the traces of Cloudbank citizens. Each Function can be used actively, as an upgrade on another skill, or as a passive modifier, turning a compact set of tools into a large space for experimentation.
The game’s art and music do much of the storytelling. Jen Zee’s luminous city designs, Darren Korb’s electronic post-rock score, and the near-constant voice from the Transistor create a romantic science-fiction tone that is intimate even when the world is falling apart.
Released between Bastion and Hades, Transistor helped define Supergiant’s reputation for tightly authored action games with expressive systems. Edge later placed it at number 65 on its 2017 list of the 100 greatest games.