A Highland Song Review: Wander the Wilds

Tucked away in the rolling green hills of Scotland lies a world of mystery and musical magic just waiting to be explored. That world comes to life in A Highland Song, a captivating adventure platformer from acclaimed indie studio inkle. Best known for narrative-driven games like 80 Days and Heaven’s Vault, inkle tries its hand at a more free-roaming experience while retaining its talent for environmental storytelling. The result is a heartfelt journey of discovery set in a lush interactive landscape inspired by Celtic myths and legends.

In A Highland Song, you take on the role of Moira, a spirited Scottish lass who sets off on a coming-of-age quest to reach her uncle’s coastal lighthouse. With only seven days before the mythic Beltane Tide, you’ll need to guide Moira through forests and over mountain peaks to unlock the secrets of the highlands. The journey grows more wondrous with each step as you uncover fragments of maps, meet colorful characters, and even tap out rhythms to magical deer songs. Ultimately though, A Highland Song offers less of a defined plot than a chance to lose yourself in the beauty of its world. It’s more about the experience of exploring every hidden corner and forging your own unique adventure.

So does inkle succeed in its first foray into this more free-form style of game? For the most part, yes. While it stumbles at times in explaining its systems, A Highland Song absolutely nails the living, breathing feel of its environments. It offers that rare chance to fully immerse yourself in a romanticized vision of Scotland’s wild spaces. Its gameplay may not satisfy those seeking a hardcore challenge, but its wonderful sense of place should captivate any gamer with an adventurous heart.

A Painterly Landscape Rich with Beauty

One sight of the Scottish highlands in A Highland Song makes it instantly clear – this pastoral paradise is a joy to explore largely thanks to its breathtaking painted art style. This aesthetically pleasing approach does more than just make environments lovely to look at too. It also helps set the wandering, carefree mood that defines the gameplay.

Inkle opted to bring the highlands to life through lavish hand-drawn tableaus, eschewing three-dimensional landscapes for a more vibrant storybook feel. Each new scene looks like a frame pulled straight from an illuminated manuscript, bursting with small hand-crafted details. Whether it’s wind gently blowing through vibrant green underbrush or sunlight catching on the surface of a tranquil loch, A Highland Song’s environments brim with organic touches that accentuate the natural splendor. Even less hospitable areas like treacherous cliffs or snowy passes prove strikingly pretty.

The game further accentuates this painterly style through playful diorama-like perspectives. The camera smoothly transitions between foregrounds and backgrounds, letting you traverse different layers of the lovingly crafted tableaus. It’s a clever way to fit sprawling vistas onto a 2D plane while making the world still feel rich and multidimensional. And it pairs wonderfully with the relaxed, freely exploratory gameplay as you uncover new depths and details.

Of course, all these visual embellishments do demand capable hardware. And while A Highland Song runs admirably on Switch, its performance does falter on occasion. Framerates stutter slightly in busier scenes and transitions display brief hitching. But these are relatively minor issues that fail to substantially detract from the fairytale-esque aesthetics. Ultimately the graphics don’t aim to showcase technical prowess, instead prioritizing a romanticized look that whisks you away to legendary Scottish scenery. It’s an enchanting presentation that harmonizes perfectly with the aimless adventuring.

Wander Free in the Wild Highlands

The true heart of A Highland Song lies not in any complex systems, but rather in the simple joy of exploration. This adventure prioritizes wide-open freedom as you chart your own course through the rumpled hills, misty forests, and craggy peaks of the Scottish highlands. Venture wherever fancy takes you while collecting bits of maps, resting in cozy shelters from the elements, and tapping out rhythms to magical woodland songs. The experience offers little challenge, but provides plenty of room to craft your own distinctly personal journey.

Most gameplay revolves around traversal as you scramble up treacherous cliffsides or carefully pick your way down forested slopes. Controls stay intuitive with contextual actions for climbing, jumping and squeezing through narrow passes. While there’s no stamina bar, sprinting too long leaves Moira gasping for breath. Similarly, falling from heights reduces her health rather than killing her outright – there’s no real fail state or extensive penalties for mistakes. This low pressure setup lets you appreciate surroundings rather than stress about challenges.

That said, some skill still factors in during brief musical interludes activated by spectral deer. These segments have Moira gracefully navigating obstacle courses in rhythm to stirring Scottish reels and jigs. Time button presses to her footsteps as she leaps chasms and strides across crumbling bridges in tune with fiddles and pipes. These pure platforming bursts add energizing variety without ever growing too punishing. Faltering doesn’t interrupt the song either, allowing you to quickly get back in step. Better performances grant more traversal distance, but fumbling through works perfectly fine too.

If anything, A Highland Song suffers most from an overly hands-off approach. Early on, it provides little guidance about key concepts like using collected map fragments to pinpoint your location. Expect to spend your first trek largely confused until subsequent attempts clarify mechanics through repetition. Once its systems click though, freedom reigns to indulge your adventuring whims at whatever unhurried pace you please. Days unfold through cycles of exploration, sheltering from dangerous nighttime cold, and occasional story breadcrumbs peppered about the highlands. It’s a lightweight but cities loop that lets location and experience take center stage.

So while it lacks challenge, A Highland Song shines in fostering the fantasy of boundless wandering its idyllic setting. This pastoral playground gives you room to get truly lost in its beauty. Some may crave more structure, but those eager to strike their own path will find a scenic journey worth treasuring.

Legends and Lore Beckon from the Mists

Though light on plot, A Highland Song still conjures up wistful tales perfect for quiet contemplation out in the lonely hills. This mystical land brims with poetry in the wind, myths etched into weathered stones, and melancholy melodies that echo across the crags. Immersing yourself in these embedded stories that hint at faded glories and sorrows helps bring the haunted beauty of this realm to life.

Rather than clearly defined quests, narrative threads instead weave organically into the wandering. Flavor text on landmarks recounts regional history. Journals tucked into crannies reveal a bard’s doomed romance. Campfire conversations with your uncle unfurl melancholy family secrets. While they avoid heavy exposition, these wispy vignettes still capture what fundamentally drives A Highland Song’s rustic fantasy – the harmony of souls and land, and cycles of joy and grief tied to the seasonal march of years.

And anchoring this all stands the remarkably believable protagonist of Moira. Voiced with an irresistibly plucky Scottish brogue, her little asides while scrambling up peaks or grousing after bone-rattling tumbles prove ceaselessly endearing. She comes across as a fully realized lass – wary and awed of this land she’s stepping out into alone for the first time, but headstrong in her desire to push new frontiers. Her presence makes even aimless hiking feel like a fresh personal journey as she reacts believably to each new marvel with you.

Additional touches like regional lore on old clan battles etched into memorial stones further reinforce the depth of history and interconnected lives that have passed through these lands. While not exhaustive, these understated storytelling flourishes still leave the heavy impression that your path through the mists is just one of countless tales that have walked this domain. Your destiny ultimately lies in interpreting symbols and themes whispered through the mountains to weave into personal meaning. Like Moira, you shape the role these storied highlands will play as she steps toward an unknowable future. It’s a light but surprisingly poignant emergent narrative shaped profoundly by your curiosity to uncover each melodious secret.

Songs and Sounds That Captivate

Music not only plays a starring role embedded within A Highland Song’s rhythmic deer sequences. These stirring jigs and reels also set the tone for Moira’s entire journey with their rustic arrangements of strings and pipes beautifully evoking the Scottish homeland. Meanwhile subtle ambient touches fill out the wilderness with birdsong, rainfall and rushing wind that makes you feel embedded in the lonely hills. Top it off with cozy voiced narration and A Highland Song sounds every bit as lush and alive as it looks.

The standout audio comes from the traditional folk instrumentation providing most of the score. Whether it’s a lone fiddle dancing lightly across a meadow or a medley of strings, flute and driving drum powering deer runs, this acoustic style infuses boundless energy. The music flows organically too with layers fading in and out appropriately as you move between areas. These exceptional compositions come courtesy of Scottish trad bands Talisk and Fourth Moon, whose clear love of the old regional forms shines through.

Vocal performances also land as wonderfully grounded, with Moira’s lilting accent in particular proving to be a perfect fit for long rambles across the glens. Actress Morven Christie manages to hit the perfect notes of wary optimism and incredulous thrill as boundless vistas unfold before your eyes. It’s a charming companion that brings welcome life and personality to the highlands. More understated effects like wind, rainfall and small hints of wildlife further embed you within the wilds. Together this acoustic blanket makes up for a lack of sweeping orchestral bombast by harmonizing completely with the folkloric setting.

Add on the fact that A Highland Song just begs to be enjoyed with headphones on, letting every meticulously crafted layer envelop your senses. The audio actively sweeps you away to legendary Scotland just as much as the visual splendor. This soundtrack is so lively that it’s sure to have you dancing gleefully across the moors in tune with Moira and her spectral deer friends in no time.

Welcome All Explorers to the Highlands

While many indie adventures focuschallenge for hardcore devotees, A Highland Song takes the opposite approach with a thoroughly welcoming experience geared towards accessibility. Inkle clearly designed this wander through Scotland with the intent that anyone can discover their own personal journey regardless of skill level or physical ability. Multiple options allow you to fine tune the traversal and audio to your needs so Moira’s travels can resonate more intuitively.

The most impactful settings focus on opening up rhythmic deer sequences to wider audiences. You can slow down their tempo, remove potential for failure states like falling, simplify button inputs and more. Camera movements also toggle off for those sensitive to motion sickness. Text sizes scale up substantially for the visually impaired while users with hearing loss can amplify volumes and mute background sound. Plus you can of course remap all controls to accommodate personal mobility restrictions.

That inherent ease of play also factors into difficulty options that largely minimize frustration. Changing weather intensity controls how rapidly Moira grows fatigued while lowered impact from falls reduces health deductions substantially. If preferred, death can even be disabled outright with Moira instead resurrecting on the spot after major plunges. You’re empowered to tweak most facets of challenge until the experience hits your ideal balance of frictionless rambling.

Smart accessibility choices reinforce A Highland Song’s core identity as a welcoming tour through picturesque vistas meant for casual enjoyment rather than demanding skill tests. While its serene paths offer little resistance for seasoned adventure fans, almost anyone can adjust the experience to match their needs. Inkle clearly worked sensitivity and flexibility into the game’s DNA, inviting players of all types to freely lose themselves in beautiful wandering reveries.

Where Every Path Leads to New Stories

While some adventures emphasize epic showstopping moments, A Highland Song instead subtly entices return visits through environmental depth that constantly surprises. Its lush wilds brim with hidden nooks unveiled only through exhaustive exploration across multiple pastoral treks. Each new expedition peels back layers of history and terrain while motivating you to chart every last mile of these misty valleys, forests and peaks.

The key driver pushing continued excursions lies in expanded traversal options tied to collected map fragments, unlocked shortcuts and landmarks discovered. Completing Moira’s initial jaunt from village to coast offers only a fragmentary glimpse across the highlands. Returning with more knowledge opens up alternate routes, peaks and landmarks referenced in scribbled documents but initially inaccessible. It transforms the land into a puzzlebox daring clever wanderers to uncover how disparate pieces interlock.

Inkle’s ingenious writers hold up their end by packing tidbits full of cryptic allusions to areas off the beaten track. The ramblings of a spirit found along a crumbling roadside wall could reference caverns accessible only after creatively bypassing a landslide further inland. Journals retrieved from abandoned camps on your fourth run might finally provide geographic logic to clues that confused you initially. New sons learned from spectral deer could even allow access to previously walled-off meadows. This organic breadcrumbing urges just one more trek to fully connect the dots.

Some diligent players have already spent dozens of hours piecing together the full picture according to developer comments. But evensniffing out most secrets may satisfy others as deeper understanding intrinsically rewards. Building your own self-guided tours reveals awesome player agency. Alongside changing seasonal and weather patterns ensuring no two trips play the same, the dense environmental design gifts essentially endless backcountry to trace until the highlands feels like a second home. For wanderers enraptured by the journey rather than the destination, A Highland Song always welcomes back thirsty adventurers longing to write their own odyssey.

Let This Love Song of Scotland Captivate Your Heart

Like a modern-day pastiche of classic British folktales, A Highland Song succeeds wonderfully in its transports players to mystical realms filled with beauty and wonder. Its serene take on the adventure genre may lack exciting action, but fully excels in unmatched environmental richness perfect for pleasantly meandering journeys. Spend languid afternoons immersed in its brooding mountain vistas and tangled ancient forests. Bond with winsome protagonist Moira as she fully embraces her Scottish heritage traversing the misty glens. Hum along to the driving strings and pipes underscoreing this romanticized vision of the ageless highlands.

In some ways, A Highland Song feels like a direct descendant of genre-defining touchstones like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of Wild or Skyrim stripped down to core elements. It retains the stirring sense of exploration and locally flavored personality while doing away with combat and busywork quests. Your objectives lie not in toppling tyrants or unlocking more power, but rather soaking up the windswept sights and sounds. Comparisons could also be drawn to fellow folkloric indie adventures like Where the Water Tastes Like Wine or modern interactive poem Mutazione that similarly steep players in lovingly handcrafted settings brimming with flavorsome cultural heritage.

Ultimately, A Highland Song stands out through both its uniquely charismatic presentation and reliably smooth execution of core design principles. A few rough edges like indifferent tutorials or performance hiccups do marginally betray its indie status. But set beside the richly harmonized audiovisual design and density of discoveriesawaiting off the beaten track, these qualms fade away. Playful spirit oozes through each hand-sketched scene and little animated flourish, making just navigating the country into its own reward.

So for gamers who prefer aimless rambling to high stakes exploits or vexing puzzles, A Highland Song may well prove an ideal virtual retreat. Its vibrant vistas restore childlike wonder shattered by this weary modern age. Let your soul dance freely to the tune of its rustic ballads and soon these verdant hills will feel like home. Just try not to lose yourself completely to the pastoral fantasy. Though who could blame you for never wanting to leave?

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