A Highland Song (PC, Switch, £14.99)
Verdict: A high note
‘Tis the season for listing out your games of the year. Which means it’s also the season for catching up on the games you’ve missed — which, in my case, includes this one, A Highland Song, from the start of December. Turns out, it’s very much a game of the year.
Truthfully, I didn’t expect anything less. A Highland Song is made by Inkle, the small British studio whose name is becoming one of the surest marks of quality in all of gaming. Among their previous releases: the brilliant Overboard! and Heaven’s Vault.
But A Highland Song is unexpected in other ways. Inkle’s focus tends to be on narrative and language — and making play with those two things. And while this game certainly has some of that, it’s also much more jumpy and climby. It’s almost like the nerds have left the library to get some exercise.
A Highland Song (pictured) is made by Inkle, the small British studio whose name is becoming one of the surest marks of quality in all of gaming
But A Highland Song is unexpected. It’s jumpy and climby. It’s almost like the nerds have left the library to get some exercise
A Highland Song casts you as Moira, a young Scottish lass who decides one day — seemingly on a flight of fancy — to leave her home and run, run, run into the Highlands until she reaches her Uncle Hamish’s lighthouse. The journey involves a lot of clambering over rocks and figuring out of maps
A Highland Song casts you as Moira, a young Scottish lass who decides one day — seemingly on a flight of fancy — to leave her home and run, run, run into the Highlands until she reaches her Uncle Hamish’s lighthouse. The journey involves a lot of clambering over rocks and figuring out of maps.
But if that makes Moira’s odyssey sound like a slog, then rest assured: it’s not. This game’s love for the colours and sounds and mysteries of Scottish mountainsides is infectious. There are sequences in which you sprint alongside a deer, trying to leap from rock to rock in time with a jig, that are among the most joyous things I’ve played… …well, all year. 2023 has been unfeasibly full of exceptional game releases. A Highland Song is among the very best.
Under The Waves (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £24.99)
Verdict: Deep and dark
Are you with Ringo Starr? Would you also like to be — as one of his few Beatles songs put it — under the sea in an octopus’ garden in the shade?
Well, think again. In Under The Waves — another game I’ve returned to for my end-of-year catch-up…it was originally released in August — the octopuses are indeed pleasant. But everything else is dread and fear and dark introspection.
Not that that’s a mark against the game. It’s just a mark against Ringo’s holiday plans. Under The Waves is a very compelling, very convincing account of one man’s grief.
Under The Waves is a very compelling, very convincing account of one man’s grief
Something bad happened in Stan’s life on the surface, so he’s taken a job maintaining oil infrastructure at the bottom of the North Sea
Fixing pipes, firing up generators, ignoring the terrors scratching away at his psyche, that sort of thing
When it comes to the actual gameplay, Under The Waves feels something like a storybook with interactivity thrust upon it. You get to pilot a submersible. You get to swim around. You get to make stuff out of sea-trash. But the main thing is always the story that makers of Under The Waves want to tell — a story of Stan’s solitude and what caused it
Something bad happened in Stan’s life on the surface, so he’s taken a job maintaining oil infrastructure at the bottom of the North Sea. Fixing pipes, firing up generators, ignoring the terrors scratching away at his psyche, that sort of thing.
When it comes to the actual gameplay, Under The Waves feels something like a storybook with interactivity thrust upon it. You get to pilot a submersible. You get to swim around. You get to make stuff out of sea-trash. But the main thing is always the story that makers of Under The Waves want to tell — a story of Stan’s solitude and what caused it.
Again, not that that’s a mark against it. The story is an affecting one, and its setting — gosh, its setting! — is extraordinary. Few other games have done quite so much to convey the weirdness and isolation — but also the beauty — of the ocean floor. No, not even Ecco The Dolphin.
It’s a well-paced game, too. Slow enough to be meditative, but brisk enough to complete in about eight or nine hours. In fact, I can see myself returning to this octopus’ garden in future… so, hang on, was Ringo right all along?
