The Lion’s Song (Switch eShop) Review

I have long considered the process of creating a game is akin to creating a piece of art, delivered to a 21st-century audience. There are many ways that games can bring information to a completely new audience, who otherwise would never learn firsthand the experiences of artists from yesteryear. Thankfully, we have the Viennese developed game The Lion’s Song.

The game is mostly storytelling, with small hints of point and click adventure gameplay to move the plot along. The Lion’s Song is episodically driven, with four separate episodes all following different protagonists struggling to achieve inspiration to fulfill their artistic desires. Each protagonist is fictional, but the worlds they interact with are based on actual events and real figures of the time.

The first episode follows a violinist named Wilma, in love with her tutor who pushes her into stressful situations, eventually volunteering her services to be the centrepiece of a concert filled with other musical luminaries. Feeling stressed and under immense pressure, after everyone is convinced of her musical genius, her tutor lends her the use of his solitary cabin in the mountains for the week prior to the concert. As the story progresses, Wilma finds inspiration in her surroundings which determine the outcome of the concert.

Episode two follows Franz, a painter who has made a strong debut within the art community. His ability to peel back people’s outer layers makes his art stand out from others. Dubbed brilliant by his mentor, Franz never finds the self-satisfaction, always looking for what’s missing in every painting. He spends the episode attempting to make a deeper connection with his subjects.

Episode three is about Emma, a mathematician struggling to make her voice heard in a male-dominated community. Being denied entry to the gentlemen’s club where famous mathematicians reside, she dresses up as a man to infiltrate their ranks to prove her worth in the world.

Episode four is a revisit of the previous three episodes, told through a group of gentlemen travelling on a train. This episode provides closure on the lives of the three protagonists and visits the connections and impacts they have made on each other.

While each episode tells a stand-alone story, they all interconnect throughout. For instance, a sketch that Wilma finds in the cabin that provides her with some inspiration for her musical piece was sold to her tutor by Franz. More and more connections are made as you play, and these connections are unlocked in a gallery as you find them, which provides replay value and an incentive to find every connection you can. While each episode takes roughly forty minutes, it doesn’t take long to go back into an episode and try out different options to see what happens.

The art aesthetic is unique in that while it uses very whimsical pixel-art (surprisingly common in this decade), it is seen only in sepia tones. As the game is set in late 19^th Century Austria, the colours add to the vintage feel of the period. Small visual cues separate each character’s personality as well, musical notes appear around Wilma as she finds inspiration, outlines of people are seen when Franz finds a new layer, math equations, and graphs float across Emma. For a pixel-art game featuring only 4 colours, there is a very surprising attention to detail to be found here.

The writing for each episode is top-notch. Conversations are represented in text form but flow naturally with no one saying anything awkward. There are conversation trees, but conversations carry on after you make a choice, there is no way to pick all three dialogue options to hear everything like an older point and click games without replaying the conversation again. The end of every episode plays out like the end of a Telltale Adventure, in giving you statistics on what paths other players have chosen. I was surprised to find I was in a very small minority when it came to decisions for Wilma, and in the clear majority when making decisions for Franz. If you are unhappy with an outcome, the end of episode screen allows you to go back to those key moments and make a different decision to see how that pans out.

The only thing I can really criticise is the amount of time it takes for the on-screen pointer to move from one side of the screen to the other. In particular with Wilma, who has multiple scenes that require everything to be clicked on, it feels like an eternity to get from the bag on her desk to a book on a bookshelf. There’s no ability to use the touchscreen either which makes handheld mode a little bit more pointless.

The Lion’s Song is a unique take on the narrative genre. While it displays point and click elements, they only drive what is three excellently told stories and a fourth that ties everything together in a nice, neat bow. The gorgeous art style and the tremendous writing draws you into late 19^th Century Austria and proves that games that tell stories about art can be excellent pieces of art themselves.

Rating: 4.5/5