Transistor
Moderate overall intensityWhat's in it
Grief, loss and death drive the plot: Red is mute and mourning, named characters die, and two antagonists are found having taken their own lives.
Two antagonist characters are discovered having died by suicide together, and the story's resolution depicts Red ending her own life to rejoin her partner within the Transistor.
The player wields a greatsword and combat Functions against robotic enemies called the Process; fights are stylized with glowing energy effects and show no blood, wounds, or gore.
An antagonist group of city officials orchestrates a murder attempt and covertly manipulates the city; these crimes occur in the story and the player does not carry them out.
The story carries an understated romantic relationship between Red and the partner whose consciousness speaks through the sword; nothing sexual is shown or discussed.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
Transistor is a sci-fi action RPG in which you control Red, a singer in a digital city who takes up a talking greatsword after an attempt on her life leaves her voiceless. Play alternates between real-time combat and a freeze-time planning mode as Red battles a spreading force of robotic enemies called the Process. The content is largely restrained: combat is stylized with glowing energy effects and shows no blood or gore, and there is a quiet romantic thread between Red and the partner whose voice now lives inside the sword. The tone is melancholy, built around a murder, a plot by a group of city officials, and characters who die over the course of the story — including by suicide. It is a single-player game with no online play and no in-app purchases.
How it's framed
The game frames its violence as combat against a spreading machine force rather than against people, and keeps injury abstract and bloodless. Its darker turns — the opening murder, the antagonists' deaths, and the protagonist's final choice — are handled as somber, understated storytelling carried by narration and music rather than shock or graphic imagery.
Details
- Developer
- Supergiant Games
- Publisher
- Supergiant Games
- Released
- May 20, 2014
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