Review for Songbird Symphony. Game for Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 25/07/2019
It is incredible how times have changed since the last century: today, thanks to the internet and the widespread possibility of reaching everyone and in a short time, it is possible to break away from the big publishers that dominated the console and PC market to embark on small productions that, with will and enthusiasm, want to bring their creations to an increasingly numerous and thirsty audience. This is the case of Joysteak Studios, one Singapore development house made up of just three people who just graduated have thrown themselves into creating video games and, after asking the network for help through Patreon, they debuted in the videogame world with the help of PQube a few years later with Songbird Symphony.
An indie that cannot be more indie, thismusical adventure in 2D pixel art landed on PlayStation 4, PC and Nintendo Switch (version we reviewed) tells of Birb, a bird raised by a peacock but which has clearly been adopted. Unaware of his true origins, Birb embarks on a journey to get to know his parents and thus discover which species of bird belongs among the many cataloged.
As you can guess from the title and the "musical" key word written above, the center around which Songbird Symphony revolves is music. In fact, Birb will soon be initiated by his uncle, Uncle Pea, into dance and musical art; from there Birb's main “weapon” for the discovery of the truth will be music, assisted by the help of the most intelligent bird in the whole forest, the Owl.
Lo The aim of the game will be to collect the different notes scattered in the forest mastered by other bird species. Birb will have to earn these notes by listening to and replicating the singing tradition of individual birds in the best possible way he visits by pressing the buttons on the screen respecting the rhythm of the song. Songbird Symphony offers an interesting sample of aves, from the most famous penguins up to less known species such as the blue-footed boobies or cassowaries, painting the inhabitants of the forest with their respective habits and customs and with a subtle background story that is understood by those who know how to listen.
Songbird Symphony is a seemingly light video game, but if you listen to its tender notes it returns a message typical of (almost) all indie productions, that is a small legacy with the player, a message that proves that there is a "heart" behind it. the story told on screen.
In the case of the Joysteak title the theme of bullying is dealt with through the protagonist bird and his companion in adventure, Egbert, both guilty of being different from the species they grew up with, and a reflection of belonging to a species and what it means to be children and parents.
Giggles, comments (and more) are the order of the day for Birb and Egbert, a cute egg not yet hatched with their legs, who find in kindness and acceptance a reason to become friends.
Egbert also introduces the discourse of puzzles, also strictly musical: just press the right sequence of notes to move that platform now, now to command our new friend to remain stationary in one point to act as a weight and activate another. As the platforms soon teach, in fact, the game is based on rhythm: both in puzzles and with the different feathered "bosses" it is essential to master the rhythm of the song. The platforms, in fact, will not move if the keys are not pressed when they light up and the bosses will return a negative score if the same method is adopted.
It works like this: to get a new note, as outlined, Birb will have to listen and repeat the keys that make up the typical song of the specific bird species he visits under the direction of the Owl, who knows the forest like the back of his hand. Once you leave the challenge, the music will begin and this will be entangled with the words that make up the composition. The words, like karaoke, trace the rhythm of the song, to be respected by pressing the required keys with the help of the Joy-Con or the Nintendo Switch controller.
At the end of the show, Birb will be rewarded with the note whatever the result, counted with the classic letters on a line a la Cuphead, which sees Birb skip until the result is achieved. There are songs for all tastes, which range according to the favorite genres of the birds: the shyness of the cassowary will mean a more intimate and nostalgic song, while the explosive dance of the penguins will lead to dancing on the sofa (or anywhere, given the typical portability Switch).
All the songs on the videogame album "Songbird Symphony" are engaging for one reason or another and perfectly show two strengths or limitations of the game, depending on your point of view. The first is that it is impossible to lose or die. As mentioned, Birb will have the note regardless of the result, whether it's a charitable C or a blazing S, so there's no danger of failing and getting stuck, just getting better. At the same time, in the forest one lives absolutely in harmony: no threats or monsters will harm Birb and the task of entertaining the bird will be up to the puzzles - which are in any case of simple resolution. The extreme ease given by no death makes it a light game and therefore ideal for the summer or as a side game to be combined with some titan of the genre.
At the same time, for those who love challenges, the game is met with a progressive difficulty of the songs: the more Birb will collect notes the more he will become at the limit of the impossible to get the highest marks. Each species not only has its own rhythm, but also a peculiar rhythmic mini-game, to the point that at times it seemed almost useless to press the rain of keys that floods the screen, preferring instead that the waters would calm down. The rather demanding musical difficulty that breaks against the apparent lightness almost leads to the desire for a special controller but appears as a precise choice of the Singaporean authors, who have decided to make up for the lack of general difficulty with the possibility of repeating all the Songbird Symphony musical challenges every time you want, both in the adventure mode and in the extra section once the short credits have passed, to improve their grades. In any case, you will have to clash with the different ways of pressing the keys of the different birds: from simply replicating the keys, waiting for them to fall from above, to learning the combination by heart and a soup of everything Birb has learned in the selva, it is sure that Songbird Symphony will engage everyone's fingers, from rookie to rhythm game expert.
Unfortunately, the songs invented by the three boys of Joysteak are not accompanied by a voice, male or female that is, that make them more concrete. It is not the end of the world, considering also and above all the limited monetary resources of the small studio of the Malaysian republic, which currently sit at the hundred dollars a month via Patreon plus the part-time jobs that Tan Kang Soon, Chue Sai Hou and Muhammad Hanif Bin Ghazali (these are the names of the authors) do to fuel their passion. The dubbing (only for the sung parts) would still have made Songbird Symphony longer in memory and would not have disfigured in a playlist to be hummed around the fire with a smile on his face.
The levels in which Birb moves and make up the forest are varied and reflect the species that inhabit it. The bird that we will move throughout the course of the adventure simply by jumping or gliding will move from habitat to habitat, thus discovering a background macro-story that envelops the whole forest and involves the disappearance of the songbirds, birds that because of their melodious songs have made all the other "classmates" sit on their laurels and who are rolling up their sleeves to return to earn the food that before literally jumped into their beaks thanks to the symphony of songbirds.
As proof of how the game is not just going forward to scrape notes, Joysteak Studios has hidden in the wild levels of colorful feathers that with a little exploration will reveal the character and soul of the birds that Birb meets along the way contributing to a small lore in which human beings have no place. Each level also features a number of colorful notes to collect. These, in addition to unleashing a musical transition that will connect to the nice and fitting tunes of Songbird Symphony, will be used to proceed to more advanced levels or discover some secrets in the game world.
The heart of the game - the music - is absolutely promoted, and everything can be enclosed in a title that, offered at a fair price, puts you in a good mood, cheering up these hot August days and that entertains with the sympathy of Birb, highlighted whenever he starts dancing or ruffles his feathers when he's upset. Songbird Symphony behaves similarly in portable mode being light even for the size it occupies on the console. The joy-cons have the same response as a Nintendo Pro Controller (if you don't follow the rhythm you are doomed anyway) and having been developed in an ideal pixel art the title does not suffer from a conspicuous downgrade, on the contrary, we will dare to say almost nothing.
Summing up, you need to have a heart of stone in order not to feel a sense of belonging at the end of this forest fanfare: everything is music in the nameless forest, and the speciesless bird is the ideal minstrel, capable of capturing all the notes. of creation and drag the player to the final dilemma: what species does Birb, the tender little bird, belong to? The answer will come not without twists and turns and not without some moving moments.
Songbird Symphony is a light musical adventure in which you have to retrace an uncontaminated forest in the feathers of a bird named Birb to discover its origins. Despite the premises, the indie title manages not to lapse into the banal, always keeping the attention threshold high with exciting music, a deep plot and important themes such as bullying and family. This videogame shaped by just three guys brings joy and demonstrates how music is a fundamental element in any self-respecting videogame title, allowing us to show the strengths and weaknesses of these wonderful winged animals that we have the honor of seeing fluttering over our heads or perched peacefully in a forest.
► Songbird Symphony is an Adventure-Indie-Musical-Platform game developed and published by PQube for Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC and PlayStation 4, the video game was released on 25/07/2019
