Song of Horror is developed by Raiser Games and published by Protocol Games. It is a fantastic horror game that hits all the marks while keeping a gripping story, and it is available on Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Famed writer, Sebastian P. Husher, has gone missing along with his family. The prologue will place the player in the shoes of an assistant tasked with checking in on the writer, but ends up also going missing, which then sparks the events that will unfold. Players are given four characters to start with as they investigate the Husher household for their own reasons, be it looking for Daniel, the assistant first sent in, to a maintenance worker simply responding to a power outage.

As the story progresses, more characters are added in, with a total of 13 playable characters who each have their own backstories. When a character is killed, players will be able to take the role of another picking up where they last were with any puzzles they were working on at the time. The inventory of lost characters can be found in the room that they went missing in, and under certain circumstances, it may turn out a character once thought dead may not be.

Gameplay-wise Song of Horror is a fantastic horror game that has the feel of the old-style genre with lots of puzzles and dark themes to set the mood perfectly. The controls are easy to pick up and use, with the inventory system using a “combine and use feature” that other horror classics have. As you progress and the spooks start to happen, you are taught how to listen at a door to see if it is safe to proceed or find a safer way to go.

This system of checking if it is safe or not was the main reason for many of my deaths as I didn’t see the prompt until the last second, so be aware of the prompt before opening doors. There are also hiding spots in certain rooms, so I suggest checking everything before you are under pressure trying to find a hiding spot.

Song of Horror has a great presence of audio from the evil music box that can start filling the void with its spooky music to add to the pressure and gives life to the threat that waits in the shadows. The characters also like to openly express their thoughts or describe what they are looking at, so there is a lot of audio lines from the characters.

Song of Horror’s graphics can be a bit low compared to many new games, with bugs present in terms of character modelling and clipping, but despite that, the areas to explore are perfectly made for any horror-themed game. From the Husher household and its many rooms to explore, from its dark hallways, and rooms cast in shadows, through to an abandoned hospital, danger waits at each corner.

As a fan of horror games, Song of Horror delivers exactly what it was aiming for. It has a variety of in-depth stories to uncover, and you can view these from multiple perspectives using the characters you can play as. There is not much I can fault Song of Horror on.

Many of the early puzzles had me feeling like I was doing things out of order and not making progress, which made me second guess myself, and I spent more time rechecking things I had already checked time over time. Song of Horror is a great horror game and will hit the itch for horror fans.

Written by: Shane Walsh