Songbringer Reviews

This is a very chill game with no focus on grinding, but more exploring the different dungeons. You are given the ability to seed a word and create a vibrant world. I, like a true scholar, picked "APETIT" as Sean Connery would for his first game! The dungeons in this game envoke a "My mother was right1 I never learn!" with a lot of exploration and puzzles to solve while being suprised by demon headed ghouls or spiders; it's all wonderful. The art style of this game is beautiful and perfect marriage with the dope soundtrack. I really enjoy the protagonist and his sidekick, to my suprise. I was expecting to really dislike the tophat - thinking it would be too goofy, but I LOVE it. The NANOSWORD is so freakin' cool. I find this to be a work of art through and through and look forward to failing at dungeons until I do it right. I wasn't one who was too crazy over Zelda(besides Majora's Mask and only because of the MASKS), but this game appeals to me. It has a great groove to the gameplay. I suggest throwing down and suggesting the Wu, the developer, for crafting such a good game. ALL IN: Get this game if you want to sink a few minutes or a few hours into a run, if you like visual delights with a psychdelic sci fi space groove track to them. Launch yourself into this galaxy!

Back in 1988, when I first explored Zelda's Second Quest I found a hostile re-jumble of the game I thought I had mastered. This new arrangement placed a greater emphasis on things like illusionary walls and hidden dungeon entrances, making finding these secrets all the more rewarding. Songbringer is not only a wonderful love letter to Zelda 1, but it manages to invoke the Second Quest in a novel way. While this game is packed with homages ranging from it's boomarang-like hat to subtle details like the way the monsters appear on each screen, it's probably the game's most original feature which strikes me as the most Zelda-esque. As each map is procedurally generated based on the name entry screen, each playthrough is predicated on randomly assembled tiles. Thus you cannot fall back on your long-honed instincts of spotting suspicious bushes or dungeon dead ends, Rather than presenting a single intentionally designed map, Songbringer contains countless Second Quests seemingly constructed from pieces of a non-existant First Quest. Thus each playthrough will feel as wonderfully disorientating and satifsifying to conquer as the Second Quest was back on the NES. Beyond the nostalgia angle, Songbringer also does some interesting (if minor) and decidedly un-Zelda things involving choices and consquences, which lend themselves to multiple playthroughs. And to sweeten the deal, whatever miraculous way this thing was coded allows it to run with all the graphical options maxed on my 10 year old Ubuntu laptop.

This game has a vibrant art style, which is what originally drew me in. The game did not dissapoint in that area either, and I'd say its the best feature of the game. The reason for the downvote comes from, what felt to me like, very clunky controls/mechanics. Everything seemed a bit too floaty. In addition to this the enemies had very uninteresting behavior patterns, which led to the game becoming quite dull very quickly. I didn't much care for the dungeons either, though the hub provides a nice sense of exploration and discovery. It just wasn't enough to keep me engaged.

EDIT: If you are too dense in the skull to understand this review maybe you will like this trash game. Only devs who make good games deserve support. Kick rocks idiot TL;DR Replay Hyper Light Drifter, Dark Souls, or even Binding of Issaic [h1]Songbringer is almost a great game,[/h1] but instead its just bad. Since nearly every other review has said what is good about the game I wont say much. In my opinion the games best feature is the procedural generated world. The interactions between Jib and Roq are defiantly worth a laugh or two. The simplistic art style does look nice and the additional lighting effects really adds to the experience. The music is eerie and odd but it fits the game world. There is defiantly a sense of progression, after each dungeon a new upgrade is unlocked. Some of them are unique, some are normal like a blink ability. The game gives the option to play on perma death mode or a normal mode. This is a real nice feature, but I can't even imagine playing on the perma death mode with the problems. Other reviewers have described the game as having "heavy" or "dark souls like" combat. But when I hear that, I imagine rewarding, slower paced combat that has impact to it and punishment beyond perma death. There is hardly any punishment for death except for on perma death mode, I don't see this as a problem but I feel that it is not a fair comparison. The biggest problem with the game is the combat (even after the combat update). Generally I replay procedural generated games not because of their story, but because they feel nice to play. This, does not feel nice to play. The sword mechanics are so far out of touch. The combat is slow and methodical. This mainly comes from the hit-boxs. Combat is incredibly frustrating due to many many things. Walking into a new room and taking damage during the transition frames due to having enemy's spawn inside of you. Hitting enemy's that bounce off walls and bounce back into you. Either whiff nearly every swing or take damage trying to be close enough. The hit boxes of bosses are especially bad. This game also has way too much going on during some of the boss fights. I can't describe it as bullet hell since bullet hell games are designed around that core game-play mechanic. There is no indication of the hit boxes on their moves. So if a boss looks like the are attacking the only thing to do is to run and spam dodge for i-frames. Except when it isint. This is a game that wants to be both, slow and fast paced. This is because of two "upgrades". The blink ability, and a shield that blocks damage after doing nothing, I would say standing still but it takes too long to be usable. The enemy's in the game are all designed to simply run at you, this would be fine if you could do anything to stop them. Some are small and hard to see, starting off slow-then they sped up 10x and hit you before you can react. Others simply run at you with multi-hit moves + collision damage. Sometimes the room you enter has 90 monsters and the door behind you is locked so all you can do is spam attack.

I do not normally review games, I have always thought there were better people out there with a much better vocabulary than me, who could write up a legit proper review. BUT THIS GAME CHANGED THAT! This Game is one of the best games that I have bought off steam, in a long time. To be honest, it is up there as GOTY worthy, for me anyway. First I will say that that has a lot to do with the soundtrack/audio. If you play this game, do yourself a favor and use headphones. the music and audio ambience is top freaking notch. The Art is beautiful. The game play, while at times can be difficult, is fun and solid. But the best thing that this game does, for me, is capture how i felt when i was a little kid playing games like Zelda or Metroid. It captures that sense of disovery....that feeling you get when you are at the end of your rope and keep running into dead ends...but then...you see something that you overlooked...another passage that leads you to an item that you need which will unlock another part of the map to explore! and progress continues! It's a great sense of acomplishment. Between that, the art, the sound, and the fun characters....this game made me want to leave a review. Few games make me want to review them, but Songbringer was worth it. so yeah play this game. Hopefully I wrote this out as well as I had it planned out in my head.

NB: -One playthrough only. -Seed string: “Patty.” -Took the sword. -11 hours to complete, with 97% map completion, 78% item completion. -Purchased on sale for $10 during 2018 summer sale. -The soundtrack's streaming online. The “procedural Zelda” consensus is accurate, and probably the reason you will buy this game, or not. The art and soundtrack are much more than pot-sweeteners; Songbringer’s pulpy, ultra-futuristic sci-fantasy brings the genre’s best grit and gloss seductively to life. The opportunity to spend time in (beneath, above) Ekzera brought me back to the game often enough to complete it. Artistry manifests here in atmosphere, not in gameplay: overworld, dungeons full of enemies, bosses, puzzles, secrets. You’ve done this before. With my string, Songbringer reliably rewarded one-dimensional aggression. You’re strong, you’re tanky, you’re mashing your basic attack. Only the Trial of Ren (DLC) and a couple of bosses demanded do-o’s. Replayability hovers in the wings while the credits roll. Different overworlds, different item builds, wearing a shirt, or not. A lot of possibilities. More challenges would certainly sharpen the hook, but Songbringer is still easy to recommend to any curious rupee collector — at the sale price, anyway.

Fun game. I enjoyed the lack of tutorial and infromation on this game. No, I'm not being sarcastic. It brought me back to a time without the ability to look up how to do something. Flicking my lighter at a wall. Trying to figure out the the heck this cup does. Satisfaction was drawn in figuring it out myself. Fun combat, cool art style, trippy cacti, and no hand holding. Let yourself loose on the planet of Ezkera. Thanks for the entertainment solo-dev-guy.

I liked this game, although some game elements are a mixed bag. It reminded me of the NES Zelda game, after a few hours of getting a feel for the game. Lot of action-rpg elements, with pixel art graphics. Combat gameplay is fairly simple, with lots of Conan-style sword swinging. Emphasis is instead on exploration and experimentation. Got to experiment and try things out to progress. The game had a mix of weird-electronica sounds that fit with the theme. While comparable to the Zelda game, this is not going to be a classic. The original Zelda inspires lasting gaming memories, and Songbringer is going to be easily forgotten. Zelda used pixel graphics to the best of that system's abilities, while Songbringer uses pixel graphics to obscure detail - to poor effect sometimes. And while Zelda used secret locations as surprising additions to the vast existing game world, Songbringer forces players to figure out the secret elements early, which often gives a feeling of dead-ends. So in the end, I played this game on an old computer running ubuntu linux 18.10, with radeon mesa drivers, and an xbox type gamepad controller. A gamepad is strongly recommended. One technical issue was that the mouse cursor remained on the screen, in fullscreen mode. The game was developed with FMOD Studio, and it had an installation size of 1300 MB.

TL;DR: Songbringer is a game that I want to like. There are good ideas here, but the inspiration is too obvious and the execution is poor. My biggest gripe with this game is the combat. You have a sword and the ability to teleport over short distances. It is so similar to Hyper Light Drifter that comparisons are inevitable. Where Hyper Light Drifter is tight and controlled, Songbringer feels loose and sloppy. Instead of having interesting and challenging enemy designs, Songbringer makes up for it in sheer numbers of enemies. This results in button mashing working just as well as any attempt at skill. Another questionable element is the demand that the game puts on you to figure things out. There is a surprisingly large number of interesting things hidden beneath the surface, but they are hidden to the extent that you are likely to miss them. I am sorry to say this, but the core game is not good enough to inspire that level of commitment. The strongest element in the game is the almost psychedelic quality. Your character can eat cactus to regain health and have visions that will help you along the way. As with the combat, this is another element that draws inevitable comparison to other titles. In this case, the obvious inspiration is Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery. That game did the exact same thing and did it much better. All in all this game feels like a fan mashup without too much depth to it. The game borrows way too heavily from Hyper Light Drifter and Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery and combines it with an overworld and dungeons from NES/SNES-era Zelda. The result is not very good. If you like the aforementioned games, you are better off playing them instead of Songbringer. In its current state and at the current asking price, this game is not worth it. It is worth noting that the developer seems to be actively listening to his audience and improvements and tweaks are said to be coming. I respect the effort and wish the developer all success in the future. This game is not for me, but it might be for you. Buy at your own risk.

I don't understand why this game doesn't have a big cult following like Hyper Light Drifter. It's a mix of Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past gameplay, Star-Wars-esque lore, and a jambalaya of procedural generation, optional permadeath, optional 2-player mode, intuitive button-binding system, nice chiptune soundtrack and pixel art graphics, casual and fun combat and exploration, cool power-ups, equitably challenging dungeons... Hyper Light Drifter and LoZ: LttP are my two favorite games of all time. I love the unlabeled sub-genre they fit into, and it's way under-produced. There are other games out there like Anodyne (which is another fun game, don't get me wrong) that come close but don't quite fit the bill. Songbringer easily blends in with the category for me and I hope to see more of its kind down the road. 10/10 ----------- Addendum: Even as I was combing the 2017 Steam Awards I had in the back of my mind that if there was a category for loving a game no matter what other people thought, Songbringer would be what I selected for that. Sure enough, Songbringer became the recipient of my The No Apologies Award nomination as soon as I spotted it.