Song in the Smoke is one of the best VR games I've played yet, but it comes with a frustrating and punishing difficulty curve.
I should preface this review by saying that I am not, by any means, a survival game player. I’ve briefly dabbled in games like No Man’s Sky and Subnautica, but popular survival games like Valheim and Rust have completely passed me by. I love the feeling of exploration and discovery, but survival game mechanics often feel either too overwhelming or too tedious. When Song in the Smoke was announced, I was really hoping the survival mechanics would be toned down in comparison to other survival games, with an emphasis on the spiritual element shown off in the trailer.
My wish was not granted. Song in the Smoke is, for better or worse, wholly a survival game. Crafting, hunting, hunger and exhaustion meters, it’s all there. Surprisingly, though, I found that to be a mostly good decision. Song in the Smoke’s implementation of survival mechanics helps it craft a unique and genuinely compelling identity, where you truly feel like a lone man attempting to survive everything the harsh and unforgiving wilderness throws at you.
Overview
Song in the Smoke is a VR survival game from indie veterans 17-Bit, known for both Galak-Z and Skulls of the Shogun. It is unique from other survival games in that it strongly emphasizes the spiritual and tribal aspects of early man. The tribe displayed in the game is fictional, but is heavily influenced by Inuit and Native American tribes. The spiritual aspects of the game play heavily into this fictional tribe, and the end result is an experience which is simultaneously creepy and jaw-droppingly beautiful.
Story
The story, as far as I have gotten, is pretty much non-existent. There is no dialogue or narration in the game, save for the title of each level, which pops up in the environment upon entering the level. There are characters, such as the three-headed crow with a face on its chest that guides you through the journey, and tribe members who appear to you in a dream. None of these characters add any real story to speak of. Instead, the dream cutscenes with the tribe members reveal to you how to tackle the boss of each area. It’s a subtle and very cool way to show you how things are done without any explicit dialogue telling you so.
Gameplay
Unfortunately, Song in the Smoke’s insistence on “show, don’t tell” is one of the many things that hampers it from becoming a must-play title. There are many, many things in this game that the developers expect you to learn on your own, from building campfires to healing your own wounds. Patient and creative gamers will probably love this, but a lot of the time, solutions aren’t exactly intuitive.
For example, at one point in the game I was mauled by a giant, dinosaur-like bird creature. Following this encounter, I had two open wounds on my hand, bleeding me out over time. Perhaps leather bindings could serve as bandages? No, maybe I should drink various concoctions to see if any of those work? No dice. The solution was to pour a mashed health herb over your hand, something the game doesn’t tell you that you can actually do. About an hour later, I was randomly greeted by a tooltip telling me this exact detail, when I had no wounds to speak of. The game often does this, giving you tips hours after you’ve already hit up Google for the solution.
The core gameplay of Song in the Smoke is ultimately pretty simple. Each stage has three singing stones. Collect all of these, and you will be granted a vision of a divine beast, with a short demonstration of how to slay it. Upon killing the beast, you can advance to the next stage, a new environment with harsher conditions and new beasts to conquer. All the while, you must manage your health, hunger, and exhaustion, while crafting clothes and equipment that help you face fiercer predators.
The unfortunate reality of how the gameplay is implemented though, is that Song in the Smoke is brutally unforgiving. I played on the gentle difficulty, and still I felt as if the difficulty was out of control. I’m no stranger to difficulty in games, I’ve beaten every Souls game, tackled Cuphead’s hard mode with ease, and even beat Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts in a single day. That said, Song in the Smoke felt like one of the most difficult and punishing games I’ve played in a long, long time.
The first reason for this is just how overwhelming everything is. At first glance, your task seems simple. Just collect the rocks, kill the beast, and get out. In practice though, nothing ever really plays out that way. First you need a campfire, for which you must collect rocks and sticks. If you get hungry in the middle of your quest for rocks, then you must forage for mushrooms or hunt small herbivores. Hopefully you finished your quest for your firewood before nightfall, otherwise you have to find your way back to the campfire in the dark, with dangerous predators on the loose. Everything you have to manage piles up quickly and stressfully, and makes things like building a simple campfire very difficult in practice.
The relentless aggression of predators makes Song in the Smoke feel even more forgiving. If you were lucky or skilled enough to face off against a lion and win, it runs away, but just comes back for revenge in two or three minutes, not nearly enough time to find healing herbs or repair your weapon.
The way the game handles time feels equally oppressive. If you slay an animal and want to harvest parts from it, you go into a carving mode that takes up a large chunk of your daytime. The leather that you harvest from animals will also quickly be destroyed upon combat with a larger animal. I spent a full in-game day trying to craft a pair of pants, only for them to be destroyed the next day or two, my defense and stealth stats going with it.
The combat also just does not feel very good. This has to be one of the biggest missteps with Song in the Smoke, as satisfying combat would do a lot to make you feel powerful after taking down a huge predator. You can use a bow or a club, but just sticking to the bow isn’t really a viable option. The club is really just not satisfying. Animals don’t react much upon being beaten with the club, and the blood is minimal, making strikes feel less impactful. This really is a huge shame, because more satisfying melee combat would go a long way.
All of that said, there’s something about the punishing difficulty and frustration that makes Song in the Smoke incredibly engaging and addicting. Much like all the games I mentioned before, the brutal and unforgiving nature of Song in the Smoke just makes it all the more enticing. At times, it feels like a frustrating and impossible task, but that also makes it something to be conquered. I want to be the cool, primal man on the cover art. I want to kill a lion with just a club, skin it, and wear its fur as a cloak. The problem is that Song in the Smoke toes the line between frustrating and challenging far too often.
Presentation
The presentation is easily the best part of Song in the Smoke, and the presentation is amazing on all levels. The opening moments of the game perfectly set the tone for what you’re in for. You open your eyes to a massive, three-headed crow, odd and strangely beautiful. The crow lifts its three heads, revealing a grinning human face on its chest, grotesque and terrifying. The creature guides you through dark caves, rocky rivers, and tall grass, buzzing with insects. Song in the Smoke embraces nature, but not an idealized Boy Scouts version of nature. Instead, it presents you with nature at its rawest, dark, scary, and filled with insects and predators.
The spiritual aspect is what initially sold me on the game, and in that aspect it delivers. It is a visual experience that truly needs to be seen to be believed. All of the spirits, visions, and divine beasts are complemented by cosmic imagery, textures of stars and galaxies make them feel truly fantastic and otherworldly.
This spiritual element also introduces not just an incredible visual juxtaposition, but an ideological one as well. As you fight nature, you become more in touch with it. Slaughtering predators might make you feel big and powerful, but the vast, ever-reaching cosmos will make you feel small and helpless.
The presentation in terms of gameplay is really impressive too. Most of the actions you take to craft, you do manually. Carve a handle for your club, chip a rock into an arrowhead, start a fire by striking stones together, all of the actions feel good and (for the most part) intuitive. I only wish that carving flesh and leather from animals followed the same rules, instead of putting you into the stupid carving time mechanic that I loathe so much.
Final Impressions
For as many complaints I had about Song of the Smoke, I had just as many things that I really loved. I can recognize that a lot of my complaints may be from my inexperience with (or distaste for) the survival game genre. Survival game or not, Song in the Smoke does a lot of things really, really well. The presentation is absolutely among the best I’ve ever seen in a VR game, and the gameplay, for all its flaws, is the most I’ve enjoyed a survival game yet. The oppressive difficulty, while frustrating, is an effective motivator, and it lends a lot of thematic credibility to the idea that you are a primitive man whose only goals are to survive and hunt.
What really impresses me about Song of the Smoke is how much it does to push VR gaming forward as a medium. There are a lot of shovelware, low effort VR games, and there are plenty of good VR games that would be just as enjoyable on a flat screen. Song in the Smoke takes full advantage of its status as a VR game, by way of good motion controls that let you act out your actions, and with incredible visuals that will frighten and amaze you.
It’s hard to give Song in the Smoke an unequivocal recommendation. It is incredibly difficult, and it does have a lot of aspects that could turn off many players. That said, survival game fans with a VR headset should absolutely play Song in the Smoke. Even VR gamers who don’t like the survival game genre should give it a try, purely for the fact that it is one of the most unique games on VR, and it does a lot to push the VR gaming medium forward. It might not be for everyone, and it might not even be for me, but I’m so impressed with the originality of this title that I just can’t help but keep playing it.
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