Some time again, I had a sense we would see loads of video games about nature and crops and the wild popping out over the subsequent few years, as builders and gamers alike emerged from being shut inside for principally a yr like dairy cows throughout their annual spring turnout. We could not all be not be naturally disposed to it, however there’s a lot to be mentioned for the fleeting, if unbridled happiness that comes from working barefoot into the tooth of the wind or getting caught in a rainstorm and not using a coat.
9 occasions out of ten, you may get moist and have chilly fingers, however that one time that you just get moist, have chilly fingers and really feel red-raw and alive is a doozy. A Highland Tune, a lone and harmful jaunt by way of the Scottish highlands, is making an attempt to seize that feeling, most particularly in segments the place you dash throughout rocks and heather alongside a deer. At these occasions you leap in time to swelling music, and whoop and yell in spontaneous pleasure. It is beautiful. It is also straightforward to stumble.
![Moira running through the highlands in A Highland Song (it is raining)](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/a-highland-song-review-5.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![Moria climbing a rock face and getting tired in A Highland Song](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/a-highland-song-review-4.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Partly it’s because you’ll fall somehwere on the sliding scale of dextrous spider educated by the Russian ballet to clumping ham-fingered idiot. I, being across the center, would generally get blended up as to which button I ought to press on the glowing rhythm-action spotlights that seem while you go for a run. However generally my earlier leap would ship me crusing over the subsequent highlight, which nonetheless counts as a miss, and generally this is able to occur a few occasions in a row. It is a little little bit of a theme; it is stunning and then you definitely run right into a wall. Or off a cliff.
However, then once more, mountain climbing by yourself up and down the highland peaks is a harmful job. The dash sections are solely a small a part of the journey you go on as Moira, a woman who lives on the sting of the hills together with her homebody mom. You’re feeling the decision to journey (or, to be extra particular, to achieve the ocean, and your Uncle Hamish’s lighthouse by the neap tide at Beltane) and thus set off at a run and a bounce with nothing however your raincoat and a backpack. There are only some days till Beltane, and the method of getting there seems like peeling again the layered 2D mountains between Moira and the lighthouse. You climb a peak, at which level the digicam zooms out to point out how tiny Moira is, and to allow you to use a map and attempt to establish a possible route forwards, a layer nearer to the lighthouse.
Inkle, as a studio, appear extra at residence telling their tales with phrases than with motion, and the motion might be the weakest a part of A Highland Tune, joyful whooping apart. Typically you press bounce to make just a little hop and Moira self-yeets right into a chasm or off the highest of a destroy like a lemming hurled by a Disney producer. Typically she will get caught on a climb up or climb down for unclear causes. This collides with the extent design, the place you may resolve whether or not you are taking place the slope within the foreground or up the slope within the background through urgent up or down, however sometimes it will simply not work and you need to reverse and run again repeatedly like a tragic roomba till the pathing hooks the bit you need.
![The collection of maps in Moira's journal in A Highland Song](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/a-highland-song-review-3.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
You additionally solely get maps of the route ahead generally, they usually’re typically hand drawn or fragments that may be laborious to match on the peaks themselves. If you happen to attain a peak when it is darkish, or if it is cloudy and raining, it is a lot more durable to identify landmarks, including to the sense of doom. If Moira falls too far (which, as a result of self-yeeting, she is going to) she loses some most well being/stamina, which additionally occurs if you cannot discover a bothy to sleep in, and so longer climbs are more durable. There’s often a couple of route off a mountain, however there are undoubtedly useless ends or optimum methods to climb round a peak. There are additionally some paths that you just’re meant to discover naturally as a part of climbing down a mountain, besides should you do not go that approach otherwise you run previous too quick, then Moira appears destined to freeze on this mountain like a small and fewer murderous Jack Torrance. To scramble down a giant snowy part, half-freezing, solely to search out your self gazing an unclimbable gravel slope, is to flirt with promoting your soul to Devil. Let it finish. Let me not run backwards and forwards on this similar part of degree for one more afternoon of recreation time.
You will not attain the ocean by Beltane in your first try. That is frustating, as I’ve outlined, and it might be so irritating that some folks by no means attempt once more. The entire of A Highland Tune is making an attempt to take care of the strain between progress and problem. Climbing mountains is difficult for a young person! Typically it really works nicely – for instance, solely with the ability to see the complete glory of the mountains while you’re standing on high of 1 is fabulous, and well worth the sacrifice of getting to maneuver on intuition the remainder of the time. However there are occasions that, because it rains for roughly 24 hours, and Moira is unable to successfully relaxation to regain stamina, and you will need to inch forwards and fall, and fall once more, and go the good distance spherical, that it looks as if precise punishment. On my first playthrough, and having recognized that should you misplaced all stamina Moira would ‘die’ and respawn someplace helpful on the map, I turned that Disney producer and deliberatly threw her tiny matchstick physique off the best cliff I might discover. This felt opposite to the spirit of the sport. Little bit of a psychological skinned knee.
![Moira standing on the slopes of a snowy mountain in A Highland Song](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/a-highland-song-review-6.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![Moira in A Highland Song looks into the mouth of a mine pit and hears a terrible noise underground](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/a-highland-song-review-1.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
In your second and third playthroughs, issues get a bit simpler. You get to maintain among the objects you have discovered (a stone, a ship made from reeds, a bronze dagger, keys that may open mysterious buildings), and your maps. Although there’s some randomisation within the little trinkets you’ll find, and the place you discover map fragments, the peaks themselves by no means change. Changing into acquainted with them makes it simpler, and also you assault the journey with extra vigour, noticing the way in which a specific climb has a run of pointing rocks to hop between, a particular little pleasure. You too can linger just a little on the marvelous Inkle-y particulars in A Highland Tune. I went to sleep close to a standing stone and was visited within the evening by a mysterious spirit that protected me. I fed a crow after which adopted it to a hidden key. A lion statue demanded to be fed… what? I did not discover it, amongst my pack of pinecones and previous taking part in playing cards. One evening, by an enormous dam, I met a ghost nonetheless ready for his lover. Moira’s Uncle Hamish says that the hills are ‘awash’ with tales, and, certainly, they’re.
There may be, as you’ll count on from Inkle, a narrative inside the story to A Highland Tune. It is price exploring additional than you dare, to skim these stones and discover the birds watching you, to higher perceive Moira and the wild a part of her which can solely absolutely reveal itself should you make your Beltane deadline. However actually, A Highland Tune is concerning the wildness all of us really feel generally, and the place we go to search out it, as a result of the wild locations and wild methods are disappearing. As a recreation making an attempt to take a snapshot of that, A Highland Tune is gorgeous and does it very nicely. As a recreation making an attempt to allow us to run into that wildness, it journeys up generally. After taking part in it, I’m left with a need to go to it once more, but additionally a lingering, obscure unhappiness. I can solely be glad about A Highland Tune making me really feel that.
This assessment is predicated on a assessment copy of the sport supplied by builders Inkle.
Disclosure: Natalie Clayton, degree designer on A Highland Tune, used to write down for RPS within the earlier than occasions.