The classic era of video games was filled with adventure titles. Titles such as The Legend of Zelda and Metroid offered gamers a wide range of exploration and combative enemies on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. One look at developer Wizard Fu’s Songbringer could have easily been mistaken as another title that came out from those early years of gaming.
Songbringer is an adventure action RPG indie title that will surely be enjoyed by fans that enjoyed the classic years of titles I’ve mentioned before, The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. The overall story follows our protagonist hero, Roq Epimetheos, and his handy skybot Jib. The duo finds themselves exploring a random world and awakening an ancient evil which means it’s now up to you in making things right again.
From the start, Wizard Fu has implemented an algorithm to Songbringer in which players can input a random six letter world seed which the game will automatically craft your game world. This would mean for millions of unique environment locations, some harder than others which can be shared to the world via those six letters.
Interestingly enough, for gamers who wish to follow a little more into the development process, the developer Wizard Fu has archived his entire live stream of the game development build online. You can watch that list of videos right here.
Similar to The Legend of Zelda, Songbringer has a vast world to freely explore with a slew of dungeons that need to be completed in each world seed. As you explore the world, players will discover new items, various enemies, and of course bosses, these bosses though can certainly be a challenge for your first time going through the dungeon.
As mentioned, Roq is not alone on his journey, players will be accompanied by a small robot, who can manage a few handy tools such as finding additional loot or helping with enemies. If you’re familiar with Snatcher from Hideo Kojima, then this is your sidekick Metal Gear. Unlike Snatcher’s Metal Gear, a secondary player can join in and lend a hand in the fight.
Couch co-op is something I certainly miss from the early days of gaming and it’s a nice surprise to see that it’s made a return with Songbringer. While the main player will take control of Roq and do most of the brute fighting, a secondary player can join a game and take control of Jib lending, more of a support type character.
Visually and audios for the video game is again much on par as to what you would find on a SNES cartridge. This is a pixel-based adventure that’s full of color and the audios that come with it certainly plays the part of an early 1990s video game.
Speaking of audio, a nice little note to add here is that the video game does take advantage of the DualShock 4 controller speaker to add little sound effects, but this could be changed within the video game settings menu.
Overall, I had a nice bit of time so far with Songbringer. The video game offers a decent replay value due to the algorithm used to create worlds and as a result, you could find your gameplay a bit tougher than another player.
We’re interested in seeing just what worlds are discovered by players when the video game officially launches on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms this September 1, 2017.
Full Disclosure: A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for purposes of this impression.
