Thinking Outside of The Box

Introduction

One of the reasons for this site’s conception was to introduce unique new concepts and the talents that drive them to the mainstream audience. One of our favourites is a small indie movie called the Vast of Night. Now, we will be reviewing a small Portuguese Horror game developed back in 2019 by Protocol Games. This little gem is called The Song of Horror.

Setting and Plot

Set in 1998 and based on the work of Horror revolutionaries such as H.P Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, the plot of Song of Horror surrounds a musical box of eldritch origins. The narrative follows Daniel, a washed-up publisher getting over his alcohol addiction, tasked by his employer to check on his missing prized author, Sebastian Husher, who has seemingly vanished from the face of the earth.

Upon arriving at the man’s estate, Daniel follows the macabre melodies of the music box and gets trapped inside a dungeon filled with nightmares beyond his wildest dreams, forced to wait for someone to save his life.

Song of Horror is a different beast to most other games of this genre, stripping the player of any means of defence against an omnipotent presence that stalks them across the halls of the five episodes. This entity messes with the player’s head, using scare tactics to force them into fleeing towards certain death.

While Daniel may be the main focal point of the game, he is accompanied by a large ensemble of friends, family and other potential human sacrifices who would gladly help him clean up his mess. However, the player can choose to play through most of the game as Daniel, except for the first episode and can even get an achievement for it.

One of the game’s most defining features is permadeath, which means that killing off a character would remove them from the game entirely.
However, if they do survive their encounter with the presence in their initial levels, they can appear further down the storyline out of investment or for narrative reasons. For example, if you complete the first location with a specific character, they will carry on and become a selectable option for the second level. You can even get specific cutscenes with that character participating, turning them for your playthrough into a central part of a cast.

Gameplay and Performances

Have you ever heard the term when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss stares right back at you? It is a term to describe how one would react if one were to confront an entity of absolute evil or their own inner darkness. Would you fight or flee? In the case of Song of Horror, the Presence is the abyss and it tempts you to falter when you see it, and to blink, is to die.

Song of Horror uses a fixed camera perspective, taking inspiration from popular games from the 64bit era, like Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare and Dino Crisis but with some slight alterations in the formula to keep things fresh. One of the most notable changes is that the game’s characters traverse these haunted locations unarmed.

The Presence

While there are some physical monsters to deal with, they are different from the standard stalker enemies, such as Pyramid Head from Silent Hill. These encounters are met with a quick-time event, in which the player must carefully succeed under very frustrating conditions or be dragged away to an untimely end. However, they pale in comparison to the Presence, the big bad entity that is running the show.

The player’s main objective is to solve the puzzles scattered around the levels without alerting the Presence, which could best be described as a hunter stalking the halls for the player like a blood-starved beast. The Presence’s AI will do its best to spook the players through jump scares and other cheap tricks into revealing their locations, then triggering an event to finish them off.

During the first level alone, it already wanted my characters to join the souls of the damned. The game’s atmosphere can be so overwhelming that at times I would have to pause the game to catch my breath to prepare myself for a possible jumpscare, or to tackle a nerve wreaking quick-time event.

You do have to play carefully as the presence is very sensitive to your reactions. For example, walking calmly across the level is less likely to alert it than sprinting everywhere. Placing your ear against doors is also very helpful. If it sounds like Sylvester Stallone is gargling in a sewer then it would be wise to stay the hell away. However, during the second level, these sound effects become far less noticeable, so I recommend going onto the options menu and selecting the visual queues to avoid any cheap deaths.

Speaking about the cheap deaths, I feel like someone at Protocol Games must have Miyazaki on speed dial to learn more about the ancient art of sadism because I died a lot. I mean more than enough times to start paying rent inside the abyss.

The ensemble of different characters reminds me of the Resident Evil Outbreak Files on the PS2, and I love those games. Each character plays and acts slightly differently, delivering their own unique commentary on what they see in front of them. For example, Alisa is a security technician assigned to help the Husher family during the first level, which means she can disable their security system when it starts going awry.

The game also incorporates a stress mechanic, which can attract The Presence. However, there are ways many of controlling this. For example, Alisa can listen to the static on her walkie-talkie to calm down, preventing The Presence from getting the drop on her. She can use her walkie-talkie to detect the entity before it is about to strike, giving the player ample time to strategise on their next move.

Song of Horror runs well on the PlayStation 4 and 5 but does have some problems with regard to lighting. Character shadows were going nuts while I was climbing up a flight of stairs during the second episode.

Characters and performances

At first, the characters felt forced, like they were performing on stage while trying to pull off their best British accents. However, by the third episode, the characters started to grow on me. It could possibly be all the deaths clouding my judgement, but there is a visible improvement in the voice acting by the third episode, especially from Daniel’s voice actor, Douglas Rand. 

Conclusion

With Song of Horror, Protocol Games has managed to infuse two different mechanics to some impressive results. They managed to incorporate the perspective from a fixed camera game and combine it with the features of an adventure game. However, unlike titles such as Supermassive’s Dark Pictures Anthology, the player can freely move around the levels. If you are a fan of old-school survival horror but want to try it with a twist, then I suggest giving Song of Horror a try.

I do have to admit that the game is rough around the edges and suffers from its fair share of technical hiccups. Factors such as the corny voice acting, the sometimes disturbing facial expressions and the unstable shadows put a small dent in the overall experience. Yet, it makes up for it with an engaging narrative, multiple characters that feel like they were all extras from Remedy’s Alan Wake and an intimidating opponent in the form of the presence. 

For Protocol Games’ first indie game, Song of Horror is quite the thrill ride, providing scares in abundance while also proving itself as a technical marvel that can go against some of the big leagues in survival horror.