Dec 6

Dec 6 Review | A Highland Song - She's A Belter

I’ve only been camping in the highlands once. The city slicker in me found the weather brutal, the cold pierced bitterly, and everyshthing combined makes you hungry and exhausted. It was also one of the most beautiful places in the world.

That’s what A Highland Song helps to show. It tells the story of the young Moira running away from home to see her lighthouse-dwelling uncle Hamish before Beltane - the first day of Summer - ends. It begins with surveying from a small peak not far off Moira’s house. The land is colossal. A gorgeous impressionistic landscape of the highlands mixes the colours of the flowers, foliage, and rocks. This is still surprisingly both vivid and distinct. After taking it in, I still had a deadline to keep, so I worked out my routes and set off fast.

This is easily the best I’ve seen of the Scottish Highlands look in a video game. Games with budgets of small countries like Uncharted 4 and Forza Horizon 4, while technically brilliant, fail to capture its ambience. Even then, at its heart, the focus of A Highland Song is a narrative telling the story of the land itself. It does so in many ways. Mostly this is done by exploring and surveying, where you will find maps around historical landmarks, natural objects, and even the rubbish left like in an old Spam can, all adding to your knowledge of the area. From those crude maps or guidebooks, you can find new routes and shortcuts to other peaks. Identifying the peaks themselves helps spur you on and tells you more of the land’s past. It never feels like a chore though, you aren’t filling in an open-world checklist by climbing up buildings like an Ubisoft game. A Highland Song is one of the few games where I felt like surveying the landscape and finding routes and peaks was rewarding. It’s just part of the natural flow of playing the game.

She definitely would and I am getting anxious just looking at you!

The focus of the relationship between Moira and her eccentric uncle Hamish is driven by the stories he tells. It’s a tale of lands and mountains woven seamlessly into your navigation of the environment, the wildlife, or the peaks. Abandoned cottages and mines touch on the Highland clearances and the vacantness of it all. Naming quartz peak tells how Icelandic invaders called them dragons’ tears. Even being a native Scot, I was learning new tidbits of history and culture. I could name the weird mythos of Selkies and Kelpies, but I couldn’t say what a Boobrie is. I had a very satisfying story from the routes and decisions I took, but the game is expected to be played multiple times. While it’s a bit frustrating that some areas and people can only be satisfied with items or info carried over from previous journeys, it’s not so bad. Each new route and peak has its own unique locations and stories, so I continued to play this game after my first playthrough, exploring every nook and cranny of this vast landscape.

This is the type of map that get you where you need to go.

The climbing itself is surprisingly brutal. Moira proclaimed she was gonna die a lot, and die she did. There’s luckily no major downside, but I had to rush, the Beltane festival was in nine days and Moria only has six days to get there. With a basic stamina and health system it seems like it will be easy but you learn fast there are dead ends and plenty of unseen dangers. Due to the sheer scale of the mountains you need to zoom out and assess how to get up to a certain point, and there are often multiple ways to do so. Add in frequent strong winds and sudden heavy showers, and things soon become treacherous. Welcome to Scotland, I guess. The main respite for healing from grazes and bruises involves resting at sheltered cover. Moira often bleats out cute little Scottish-isms and eats sweets or bits of assorted foods during these breaks. A particular highlight is her proclamation of how great a Crunchie bar is, but resting speeds up the passage of time and I would get flustered, especially with that lighthouse nearing closer and closer. Silly mistakes abound.

After getting through the climbs, Moira chases deer in rhythm sections set to modern Scottish folk music. These are mainly to the tune of music by the band Talisk and Fourth Moon, with a very basic hop skip and jump mechanic. The music is fantastic though, helping to bring a delightful momentum and focus to drive onto the next mountain. It’s a fantastic contrast to the sometimes stressful climbing and are moments of genuine happiness.

To my knowledge, A Highland Song is likely unprecedented in its representation of Scottish culture in video games. Add in a nice balance of exploration with tough but considered platforming, that is balanced out by uplifting rhythm sections, and you have something special. This absolute reverence for this land and its culture makes A Highland Song the Scottish game.