Disapprove: Song of Horror

It is extremely rare that I stumble upon a horror themed game where I see developers spending a lot of time researching and trying to create something of their own instead of copying some pre-existing formula. Song of Horror feels like a project that tried really hard to get the essence of every horror themed game now considered a classic, understand why those worked and how. And I tried really hard to love it. But I can’t.

I truly admire what was attempted here. Song of Horror developers looked at Alone in the Dark, Uninvited, Fatal Frame, Clock Tower, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness and countless other horror themed games and series that are rightfully considered classics, they read through works from gothic horror literature and the weird fiction… They did the research, they know their stuff. And they love it – you can feel that through the game. There’s so much great thought and detail put into the Song of Horror when it comes to the story beats, the characters, the sets, the themes, the twists, the ideas.

The game story is a mix of weird fiction/Lovecraftian “fear of the unknowable”, melancholy and depression of E.A. Poe and a mystical adventure plot reminiscent of The Bottle Imp by R.L. Stevenson. An unlucky person gets accidentally involved in a plot with a mysterious music box and its cursed melody, which exposes him to some mysterious dark force. And he, with the help of other people, is trying to figure out what exactly is going on and how to free himself from the curse. The story is really well done, characters are great (for the needs of the story), the locations of each episode and their history are engaging, the plot is unfolding at a good pace. The ending is weaker than what it could be, but it’s still a genuinely good horror story.

Problem is, Song of Horror is a videogame, not a story. And for how well the developers figured out the narrative bits, they could not figure out how to make the gameplay fun. So they gave up. The result is like a mixture of completely disconnected game ideas that don’t mash together at all, some of which are actually quite solid, and the rest are just terrible.

Let’s start with interesting ideas. Almost each episode in this game has several characters to choose from. Each of those characters has a specific reason as to why they’re involved with the plot and each of them have unique descriptions, dialogues and reactions to the elements in the game world, which is super well done. Also, if you die as any of the characters (except for the main character), they die permanently. But the story continues.

This works fantastically well with the main gameplay loop of the game – the careful exploration. Most of the time, you’re slowly investigating the location the episode takes place in, finding new routes, solving puzzles and trying to get to the main goal of the episode. You have a light source with limited visibility, occasionally you see or hear scary things and every new door is a potential danger. This is where the main gameplay mechanic comes into play – for each door that you’ve not opened yet (and for any door that recently had some paranormal event happen to it), you get an option to listen to what’s behind it. If you hear anything – do not open that door. If you do, you die, simple as that. It’s extremely basic and yes, the whole game wouldn’t be able to hold on just this, but it’s a surprisingly engaging mechanic that doesn’t get old. And if you die due to ignoring a warning – that’s on you.

There are other “death traps” which are usually well telegraphed. Though that said, there are also moments where the game wants you to take a risk and there is a perceptible logic to when it’s safe and when it isn’t, yet it still doesn’t feel “fair”, because to truly understand this logic, you would need to die at least once. And that’s where the problem creeps in – while the game features this selection of characters and the permadeath is part of the game experience, losing a character sill feels like a failure in the same way a “game over” would. It never feels like “oh shucks, well I’ll be more careful with my next character”. It feels like “why can’t I just restart a checkpoint?” And, well, you can now since the game was updated with the difficulty setting that allows for that, but then – why build a game around permadeath, and yet not make that feature feel like it’s a fun part of the experience?

That’s not the biggest issue, though. The biggest issue is that most of the time if you do die it won’t be to the fun core mechanic of the game. No, it would be to horrid obnoxious mini-game and QTE sections that simply kick in occasionally (semi-randomly, based on the stats each character has and how “loudly” you play) and some of the worst controls I’ve ever had in a third person fixed camera angle game in my entire life. Those QTE’s are just pure trash to the point where I switched to an easier difficulty midway through the game just because when you lose an hour of gameplay simply because you’re bad at mashing the buttons in a game about careful quiet exploration, it’s just infuriating. And when that happens because the characters constantly refuse to do what you tell them to because the controls are terrible, that’s even worse. Tank controls would’ve fit the way the characters control so well, yet they’re not used. Than again, you can’t even rebind the controls in this game at all, which is no less strange.

And another thing that breaks the game is the approach to puzzles. There are a few which are at least somewhat entertaining or at least not annoying to go through. The majority, however, are a either boring or barely make sense. Notably, one puzzle in the last episode was changed with a patch, yet, with the new explanation the puzzle makes even less sense and the old one was really stupid already. While another puzzle is basically a check if the players have the real world understanding of roman numerals or not. If you do – there’s no puzzle just busywork. If you don’t – well, sucks to be you.

I genuinely admire what was attempted here. As it so often happens with western horror themed titles, it feels as if the developers made a decision that the story and the atmosphere of the game trump over whatever terrible gameplay their game would have. And because of that decision I cannot recommend this game to anyone, simply because it’s not fun to play at all. Even if you were to play on the easiest difficulty, it would be just delaying the annoyance from each QTE sequence and puzzle and breaking some of the game’s main mechanics. Mechanics that aren’t good by design in the first place. Song of Horror could’ve been one of the most inventive and inspiring horror themed adventure games in years, but it simply isn’t. And it makes me really sad.