Songbringer is a randomly generated pixel art game that bears some similarities with the Legend of Zelda series. Learn more about this one in our Songbringer review!
The team is one-man indie Nathanael Weiss, someone who is obviously a fan of Nintendo’s famous The Legend of Zelda franchise. In Songbringer you have dungeons to explore, loot and beat. There are a ton of random worlds up for you to adventure in, but for you to gain access to the same world during your run, you need to enter a seed code that builds that exact version of the world you play.
The game is challenging, and you can decide to go full roguelike with permadeath, or you can dial things back a bit to enjoy the story so that you can continue even after making a mistake that ends up with you dead. It’s always great to have options and choices, and in Songbringer you’ll be able to play the game your way.
Wizard Fu took Songbringer to Kickstarter back in 2015 with a modest goal of $9,000, which at the time seemed crazy for the type of game that Wizard Fu wanted to create. Madness, right? Well, long story short, the game is out on PlayStation 4 (hence this review!), and it’s a fun and interesting console release that does some things right while fumbling a couple of other things.
You play as Roq, and your primary goal is to explore and beat the dungeons and their bosses to beat the game. This is not an easy endeavor, as it will take a great deal of skill – even more so if you choose to play on permadeath mode. Sonbringer has some pretty awesome gameplay mechanics. For example, you can find and consume Cacti, and that causes the world perspective to change, giving you the ability to see the secrets – things such as walls that you can collapse with bombs. Pretty cool, right?
Roq is not adventuring alone since he has Jib, his pet robot, helping out. Jib is capable of scanning enemies and collecting loot from their bodies. If you want to play Songbringer in Co-op, you absolutely can, and a friend can get to control Jib as support while you adventure together.
As you progress through Songbringer, you will be able to gain access to upgrades, being able to use mighty bombs, a handy boomerang and more – there are also some single-use items thrown into the mix. As for bombs, be sure to step back a good distance as the bomb radius is bigger than you’d think. If you don’t do this, you’ll get to learn from your mistake the hard way!
Interestingly the game doesn’t really tell you what to do or where to go, so you are free to do pretty much whatever you want and play how you see fit. I liked that idea as it enhances the sense of being out in an unknown land, searching for what to do next to keep things going.
The secrets you will uncover will be different player to player, so there is no telling if my gameplay experience will be remotely similar to yours. Some worlds will be far easier than others. There is no real way to know if you are playing a difficult seeded world or an easy one. If you find your world too easy or too tough, all you can do is start over to input a different code to generate a new world and take your chances!
Since every playthrough is different depending on the seed used to play, Sonbringer is a game with a high level of replayability. The fun part about this system is that if you find a seed that you really like, you can share that code with the world so that others can have exactly the same base experience as you!
Sonbringer is an absolute joy to play with lots of secrets to discover. The option in the game for entering a code to have a set world to explore which you can share with the rest of the world is a very interesting idea for a procedurally generated game, and it definitely made my experience with it better. Being able to play on your own or have a friend take over Jib is a nice option, and something I liked. If you’re looking for a fun action game on PlayStation 4 and are a fan of the old-school The Legend of Zelda games, then you should definitely give Songbringer a go.
Disclaimer
This Songbringer review is based on a PS4 copy provided by Double Eleven.
