It's coming to that time again where everybody dresses up in costumes (often beginning with the prefix of 'sexy'), go to parties or nights out with people and gets incredibly drunk. In other words, a Friday night when I'm not working that weekend. For other people, it's called Halloween. In the case of Song of Horror, an upcoming horror game by Madrid based developers Protocol Games and publishers Raiser Games (Goat of Duty, Youtubers Life).
The thing that interests me about Song of Horror isn't so much that it's a horror game. I do love horror, always have, but the myriad of samey corridor-walking jump-scare filled horror titles with next to no gameplay has left me thinking that there's no point unless something special comes along, such as Until Dawn or Man of Medan.
Speaking of Until Dawn and Man of Medan, Song of Horror has multiple characters - thirteen to be precise - which you can play through the story with. When one dies, they die permanently, leaving you with the next character in line picking up from where the previous character left off, but from a different perspective. All of this while being picked off slowly by 'The Presence', an AI-controlled entity that is said to learn from the player and adapt to how they play.
Carlos Grupeli, the founder of Protocol Games, had this to say:
The Presence watches the player. As the player enters The Presence's territory, it responds to the intrusion and continues to respond in answer to the player's actions. However, even if you do exactly the same thing, it will respond differently. You have no control over it because it plays by its own rules. The fun part of testing this game - even though we've played it about 400 times - is that sometimes even now the damn thing still manages to scare us.
As for what it's said you'll do in Song of Horror, you will: -
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Investigate a paranormal mystery wrapped up in a story of psychological horror.
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Tangle with The Presence, an otherworldly entity with its own adaptive A.I. that reacts to your actions and decisions to deliver an unscripted, unpredictable slice of horror.
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Choose between a group of unique characters, each one bringing their own point of view to play with a different relationship with both the story and other characters.
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When characters die, they die for good, but the horror continues...
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...with the investigation picked up by a new character, tackling the story from a unique perspective, but one affected by their predecessor’s actions.
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Explore haunted, sinister locations to gather clues to piece together the mystery behind the missing Sebastian P. Husher.
Song of Horror is an episodic game, launching with episodes 1 and 2 on the 31st of October on Halloween.
