izigame.me

This game was reviewed using Version 1.1.0. Your experience on other versions may vary.
Short Answer: An exploration-focused 2D platformer that can be fun if you have the patience to handle some questionable design choices. Exploring the Scottish Highlands feels satisfying thanks to gorgeous music/scenery and the sheer quantity of secrets to be found, and it's designed with replayability in mind so that every playthrough feels unique. However, an arbitrary timer prevents you from taking each run at your own pace without resulting in a bad ending; and trying to keep pace with the timer makes even the good ending fall flat because you lack context that can only be earned from thorough exploration. Another one of those games where I wish there was a "mixed" option for reviews, but ultimately I did find more to like than dislike during my time with it.
Long Answer: A Highland Song is a 2D platformer where you play a young girl named Moira on a quest to cross the Scottish Highlands to reach her uncle Hamish. He tells her to come to the lighthouse by the sea before Beltane, one week from the start of your journey, so she can see something of great significance to him (though I won't spoil what that is). Along the way, you'll find yourself climbing tall mountains, racing across valleys, spelunking in caves, and learning more about the history of the Highlands, its inhabitants, and Moira herself.
The bulk of the gameplay revolves around 2D platforming with some light survival mechanics—no need to manage resources like food or anything, but you have to minimize actions that drain your health (e.g. long falls, traveling in bad weather) and make sure to find places to sleep before night falls. Traveling from valley to valley to reach the lighthouse in the distance demands exploration and a keen eye, because while some paths forward are indicated by a small marker (e.g. a wooden post), most are hidden and can only be found through the game's main collectible: maps. Maps come in all different styles, and deciphering them can lead you to everything from new shortcuts, items you can use elsewhere in the world, or even just other maps. Lastly, traveling across flat plains lets you play a simple rhythm minigame, requiring just one or two buttons as you jump to the beat of one of several Scottish folk tunes.
These individual mechanics aren't too complex on their own, but their variety helps keep the experience entertaining—which is important, because this is a game meant to be played more than once. You're given this huge sweeping shot of the environment at the start of every playthrough, and that's not just for show: much like their real-life counterpart, the Highlands here are big. When you see a mountain or a valley in the distance, you can go there if you can find the right path to it, and each one is liable to hold its own secrets for you to find. Given that it's practically impossible to see everything there is in a single playthrough, A Highland Song encourages you to play multiple times by letting you retain your discovered locations and inventory on subsequent playthroughs while also providing access to new content.
All of this ties into the "dynamic storytelling" advertised on the store page: certain actions you take or locations you visit will give little nuggets of information that tie into the main story, and which parts of it you'll get to see changes with every playthrough. This is a cool concept in theory, but the downside is that the ending feels underwhelming, if not outright confusing, the first time you see it because you're expected to play more than once to get the full context, and it's hard for a story's conclusion to make an impact when it isn't given the proper buildup first. You might be asking "why don't you just search the map with a fine-toothed comb to get all this information before beating the game?", which is a fair question to ask. The first issue is that you can't backtrack to previous valleys once you've left them, and it's not always clear when a path you take ends in a point of no return. The second issue boils down to what I think is my least favorite part of the game: the timer.
Remember when I said that Moira needed to reach the lighthouse in just a week? While it may not stop your playthrough cold if you go past it, doing so does result in a "bad" ending, giving you the small fanfare of reaching your uncle before he takes the wind out of your sails by saying "Sorry, you missed what I wanted to show you, try again next year." The timer doesn't add much if anything to the narrative, and putting a timer on an exploration-focused game hurts the experience by discouraging you from actually exploring at your own pace. Plus, in this particular case, it results in a lose-lose situation: you either rush through the game and fail to get proper context for the ending, or take your time to find that context and fail to get a proper ending at all. In all fairness, you're free to ignore that timer after your first successful trip since the "good" ending never changes; but it still results in that initial playthrough being less satisfying than it could be, which is even worse for players who only want or expect to play one time.
I put about 12 hours into it across 6 playthroughs, and I'm torn on where I stand with it. These issues are harder to ignore the more I look back on the game as a whole, but it also didn't stop me from playing half a dozen times either. For every part of the game's design that made the experience fun, there was something else that took just a bit of that fun away; and although I did still enjoy it at the end of the day, I wish I could have enjoyed it a little more. You'll find a lot to love about A Highland Song's story, setting, and artistic quality without a doubt; but I wouldn't fault you if you lacked the patience to work around its gameplay flaws.
For more game reviews, check out my Curator page!