A couple years ago, I was working for Giga Geek Magazine as a volunteer writer, scraping together stories from anywhere I could get them. In those early days, as the site itself was still fairly new, there were just a few games that would even give me the time of day. Songbringer was one of those games. Songbringer is an action adventure game akin to the top-down Zelda titles, but with a randomized map for infinite playability. Not only that, but the game was entirely developed by one guy, Nathanael Weiss aka Wizard Fu, who got some help with publishing from Double Eleven. Now, the game is finally ready for everyone to try out on PC and Xbox One, with the PS4 version coming out on September 5th.
Songbringer stars Roq, a planetary surveyor that crash lands on a strange world. Along the way, Roq accidentally awakens a powerful evil that could threaten the entire galaxy. Wielding the powerful sword of this world, the Nanosword, and with a little help from Jib, the robotic drone companion, players will have to piece together the mysteries of Ekzera and put an end to the dangers they’ve awoken.
Gameplay is pretty similar to the classic top-down Legend of Zelda games, with elements pulled right from the original NES game. Graphics are done in a gorgeous pixel art and the soundscape hits all of those ambiance notes of classic science fiction films. Gameplay feels tight, as its not locked into a grid like its inspirations.
Features include:
- Single-player action RPG
- Local co-operative two player mode
- Full gamepad support, including rumble
- Real time combat
- 7 kinds of weapons including the nanosword, boomerang-like tophat, bombs, blink orb, ghost sword projectile, lighter and kilobombs
- Hundreds of unique items and powerups
- Some items can be combined, for example: ghost sword + lightning cube = lightning sword
- Hidden items, secret entrances, secret pathways, bomb-able walls
- Original soundtrack
- Online leaderboards highlight the top players based on completion time, percentage of map uncovered and percentage of items found
- Roguelike-inspired permadeath option which gives a higher score on the leaderboard and allows for faster runs
- Approximately 6-12 hours of gameplay per adventure, depending on thoroughness
- Procedurally generated overworld and dungeons
- A world contains: 1 overworld, 10 dungeons and 13 primary bosses
I have been playing early builds for the past couple years and watching Weiss develop the game live on Twitch occasionally. Needless to say, I have a lot of connections to this title, as it was one of the first industry connections I had made for myself. This connection culminated in actually getting to meet Weiss at PAX East and I consider him a friend. That aside, Songbringer, even in its earliest days, is a fantastic experience for fans of 80s science fiction and traditional Zelda-like games with a few spins here and there.
I look forward to sitting down and playing the full version myself.
For more information on Songbringer, check out the official website. It is available now for PC and Xbox One, with the PS4 version coming out on September 5th. Here’s hoping for a Switch and Vita version!
Songbringer was a nomination for Best Indie Game of PAX East back in March. Check out that list of excellent games here.
