“Playing A Highland Song … instantly transported me back to Northern Europe in the most joyful way possible.”
Earlier this year, I embarked upon a hiking trail in the Shetland Islands, just east of the Scottish mainland.
The awe-inspiring vistas looking out to the ocean, the crisp chill of the fresh air and the abundance of wildlife and nature in all its forms created an unforgettable experience that I often reflect back on fondly.
Playing A Highland Song and climbing its artistically rendered version of the Scottish Highlands instantly transported me back to Northern Europe in the most joyful way possible.
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A Highland Song is the latest release from independent developer-publisher Inkle, merging side-scrolling platforming, exploratory adventuring and a surprise dose of rhythm gaming, along with a touching narrative about family and self-discovery.
Mountainous Mythology
You take on the role of Moira, a fifteen-year-old girl living with her mother in an isolated home in the Scottish Highlands.
Moira receives a letter from her Uncle Hamish, urging her to visit him at his lighthouse. Having never seen the sea, Moira runs away from home, climbing through peaks and valleys to make her way to her uncle.
To reveal any more of the story would be to spoil the experience. The narrative reveals itself in a non-linear fashion as you embark down branching paths and unveil new memories, relics and experiences.
One playthrough isn’t enough to experience the full story as different choices you make and new areas you visit will reveal more information.
The ending changes depending on how quickly you reach your destination, but I wouldn’t encourage rushing your first playthrough. I reached the end in a little over three hours and my subsequent runs were faster thanks to having more tools and shortcuts at my disposal.
As you explore the land, you’ll run into characters and visit locations that have their own stories, building a sweeping narrative that draws on Scottish history and mythology while providing a backdrop to the smaller, personal adventure of Moira.
The highly interactive storytelling is what kept me coming back for more playthroughs. I’ve now sunk in well over ten hours as I attempt to climb every peak and find every secret that awaits me.
Peak Platforming
A Highland Song plays mostly like a 2D platformer in that you’re clearing gaps and climbing cliffs with a similar stamina mechanic to the recent Zelda games.
In order to navigate to your destination, you collect scribbled map fragments from a variety of sources throughout the game.
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Whenever Moira climbs to one of the many peaks throughout the world, the player’s perspective encompasses the entire landscape visible from that particular peak. From there, you can try to find where the maps match up to identify different parts of the world as well as discover caves, tunnels and other shortcuts.
This style of exploration gently nudges the player in the right direction without taking away from your personal sense of discovery.
I always ended up making progress in some form, no matter how lost I became in the vast world. This is a credit to the meticulous level design that leaves something useful everywhere you go.
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The map fragment matching UI occasionally frustrated me. There were a handful of times when I was told I hadn’t chosen the correct area, only to discover my pointer was only very slightly out of range from where the game wanted me to select.
These were only minor quibbles in a system that I appreciated for giving me a great deal of freedom to chart my own course.
There are also several survival elements to the gameplay. Moira needs to sleep each night to preserve her health, as well as managing weather conditions such as wind, rain and snow.
These factors felt conflicting to the game’s largely mellow design philosophy. Still, the penalties for death are not only slight, but also can tie back into the story. And as you’d expect from modern games, there are accessibility options to turn these conditions off.
Rocks and Roll
You’d hope a game with ‘song’ in the title is going to deliver in the music department and A Highland Song doesn’t disappoint.
Laurence Chapman’s backing score is outstanding, always responding to your progress in the game. Eerie sustained notes fill the night as you try to seek shelter. This contrasts with the sweeping strings and keys that make climbing a peak always feel majestic.
Where the music truly stands out is in the rhythm platforming sections scattered throughout the world. Bolstered by licensed music by Scottish folk bands Talisk and Fourth Moon, you will encounter jumping sequences that get progressively more complex as you move further into the game.
Completing these areas allows you to cover a lot of ground in a short space of time and if you perform the sequence flawlessly, you’re rewarded with upgrades to your running and climbing ability.
These moments were my highlight of the game. They felt ideally spaced out so as to not become repetitive and the wonderfully rousing tunes summoned such a sense of triumph upon completion.
The overall soundtrack rates amongst my most enjoyed video game music in recent memory. For all the things this game does well, nothing transplanted me back to my delightful memories of Scotland like the tunes I heard during Moira’s adventure.
Landscape Artistry
You will spend a lot of your time in A Highland Song scanning the environments of the game, so thankfully the stunning vistas in this world are delicately captured in an expressive storybook style.
The backdrops are layered like paint strokes over each other, drawing the player’s eye to certain areas to help them progress while also cheekily masking some hidden shortcuts for more observant adventurers to notice.
The animation of Moira and the other characters in the game is simple but effective. There’s a lot of detail in the illustration of these 2D characters that evokes modern European animation and allows for a great deal of personality.
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The Performance
Movement is fast and fluid creating highly responsive control feedback for the player.
In my time playing the PC version, I found the performance to be really impressive and polished.
I tested the game on a gaming laptop and my Steam Deck and it ran at a constant 60 frames per second on both, getting around four hours of battery life on the Deck.
Conclusion
The free-form exploration, gorgeous visuals and stimulating soundtrack always had me excited to come back and experience more of Moira’s journey.
A Highland Song is such a rewarding experience where you don’t second guess your decisions or feel overwhelmed plotting out maps and directions, because it rarely punishes you for your choices.
The game instead focuses on making whatever route you take feel fulfilling in its own way.
As I made my way through subsequent playthroughs, witnessed the different endings and built my own relationships with the game’s characters, this was a world I didn’t want to leave.
Thankfully, this is a highly replayable title and I still have a few discoveries to tick off my list to fully complete everything, so I’ll excitedly be coming back for more.
Terms like ‘walking simulators’ can be a major pejorative for some people and this game’s curious and investigative style of adventuring might not be for everybody. But if anything you’ve read here seems appealing to you, I’d strongly recommend checking this out.
A Highland Song is a sublime achievement and easily ranks as one of my favourite gaming experiences of the year.
Quest Daily scores A Highland Song:
9/10
Quest Daily was supplied with a review copy of A Highland Song by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
