I wanted to like this game. It has positive reviews and looked like a good time. Puzzles, creepy locales and inventory management are all the elements of a good time (in my opinion). Unfortunately some of the systems and gameplay choices hold it back from reaching its full potential.

Daniel is the “main character” and he works for a publishing firm. One of their biggest authors hasn’t been responding to calls and Daniel needs to go to his house to find out what’s going on. Upon arrival, Daniel is greeted by an empty house playing some eerie music and he spots a strange door. He goes into the door and isn’t heard from. This is where the player comes in. You choose from one of four “characters” and go to the author’s house to find Daniel. I use quotations because they are more like “lives” than “characters.” It’s also important to note that this game was released in episodes, so each one follows its own scenario. The goal of the first episode is to find Daniel, but you have to traverse a dark house with locked doors and a sinister presence to find him. I found the overarching narrative the most interesting part of the game. It kept me playing for a bit, but I just could not make myself keep playing past episode two.

The puzzles in this game are either blatantly obvious or ridiculously convoluted. In the beginning of the first episode I gathered many objects and didn’t have use for some of them until the end of the section. The fireplace puzzle really got on my nerves as you have to find three different objects to light it and when you do, it does nothing (until the end of the episode). The way they are designed doesn’t lead to any thought provoking from the player as each item has one specific use. There was only one instance (other than with keys) that I kept an item after using it. In the second episode there isn’t anything different in the puzzle design. It failed to make me think and was also a larger area. Because of the increased area, you would expect more varied puzzles, but no. It’s more of the same and the amount of doors you can never enter in this section really bothered me. Survival horror games incentivize you to explore, but carefully. Song of Horror only made me frustrated that I had to run between a large, empty area multiple times to find the right way to go.

The atmosphere of the game is initially well-set. A creepy manor haunted by soft crying and a sinister presence looming over you. Unfortunately this doesn’t last long. Once the first few scares happen, you realize that it’s not really scary. There are cheap jumpscares and only a couple instances that made my hair stand on end. One such instance was in regard to a photograph. It looks normal at first, then you read the back and it says “do not look at this photo.” When you turn it around it’s not a normal picture anymore but a closeup of a terrifying creature. Other than this moment, it’s all jumpscares and that left me really disappointed.

The mechanics of the presence are not explained well either. You can listen at doors before going through as sometimes it’s waiting on the other side to get you. This applies to every door the first time you encounter it, but afterwards it will only show up sometimes as an option. I’m not sure why they added this mechanic as it really slows down the gameplay. If you ignore it, you’ll most likely be fine (until you aren’t).

Your character has a heartbeat that you can feel with your controller. I assumed that if their heart beats fast, the presence will come as one “character” has scented candles that calm her down if she gets scared. I was wrong. The presence interrupts your investigation completely at random and when it does you better be ready. There are instances of it trying to break down a door and you have to do a quick-time-event to close it, or you die. I actually like quick-time-events and this game actually designs some really cool ones in my opinion. A really cool instance of this is when you have to hold your breath for the Silence. This creature can’t see, but it can hear you. When it shows up you have to hold both triggers down at the right pressure to keep your breath in a circle as it changes size. It was a really cool idea and it made the scenario really intense. Sadly, the presence can also just start to cover everything in icky, mold-like stuff and you have to find a hiding place to wait it out. The quick-time-event for this is pressing both triggers on time with your heartbeat to slow it down. Again the quick-time-event is good, but the mechanics of the presence are more annoying than scary. If you could plan for it by managing your heart rate or have some warning that it was coming, it would make for a more interesting experience. As it is, the presence feels like a cheap scare, instead of a sinister entity.

Now let’s talk about the most controversial part of the game’s design, its lives system. The “characters” you play as are your lives. If that character dies, you lose them forever and if you lose all of them, you have to start the episode over. This is the recommended difficulty of the game and could have been a really cool mechanic, if any of the “characters” were actually different, had their own motivation in the story or there weren’t instakills littered throughout the levels. A survival horror game is supposed to incentivise exploration and experimentation while providing the player a sense of urgency. This game does none of that because of the various instakills. It also doesn’t reinforce any thought processes the player has, leading to a frustrating experience. Let me give my example. I was on my second character in episode one. I lost the first one to a door with someone crying on the other side. I figured it was someone I could help, but when I opened it, two ghost people killed me. Now, having learned from that mistake, I was heading into a new area (the attic) and there was a crying girl in the corner. The last time I talked to a ghost, I died, so I did the only thing I could in this new area; I went out the window. I then watched my character slide off the roof and die. While this was funny in the moment, I was dumbfounded. Was I supposed to talk to the ghost? After loading up the next character, I went back to the attic because there had to be something in there. I saw nothing but the girl, so I kissed my life goodbye and talked to her. I didn’t die. How was I supposed to know this ghost wouldn’t kill me? The game told me they would kill me, then went back on it. Shortly after this, I was in a bedroom and the presence was coming and I needed to block the door, but I didn’t make it in time and died. On my final life, I was exploring and found a bathtub with murky water in it. The game asked if I wanted to pull the plug and I said “yes.” My final character got sucked into the tub and killed and I had to restart the entire episode. At that moment, I almost uninstalled the game. This design is baffling to me. If you’re going to have instakills in your game, you need to have established rules around them. Teach the player what to avoid or don’t introduce them. It discourages the player from fully exploring the game and causes nothing but frustration. It goes against game design as a whole and is the single thing that made me quit playing.

Song of Horror has some cool ideas, but it is such a mess in overall design that I had to stop before completion. The instakills cause the lives system to be frustrating and the unexplained mechanics of the presence lend to this as well. The quick-time-events provided some tension to encounters, but were bogged down by the jumpscares. Coupled with previous complaints, the lack of character for the “characters” kept me from becoming fully invested. I wanted to like this game, and the story was enough to keep me going initially, but the lack of any real vision did not make me want to see it through.