Developer/publisher - Inkle
Format - PC, Switch
Origin - UK
Release - TBA
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62453846c322b/1648703359520.jpg]
Hopping from stone to stone, a teenage girl narrowly avoids the splash of the stream below. Next she rushes down a slope, momentum carrying her forward. She scrambles up the side of a crag, careful not to lose her grip. At the top, as the girl finally stops to catch her breath, the camera pulls out to reveal the Scottish Highlands around her – then out farther still, demonstrating just how alone she is in this beautifully bleak landscape. There’s not another soul for miles.
After the crowded cruise-ship setting of Inkle’s previous release, the contrast is clear. “We’ve had a bit of feedback since announcing the game of, ‘Oh, this doesn’t look like a usual Inkle game’,” director Joseph Humfrey says. “That just makes me think: Oh, what is a usual Inkle game?” He’s got a point: Pendragon’s turn-based strategy doesn’t have much in common with the archaeological adventuring of Heaven’s Vault. But what people are thinking of, we suspect, is the source of 80 Days’ immense charm, what Overboard condensed into its half-hour runs. The characters. The writing. The joy, ultimately, of a good chat. While there are people to meet in the Highlands, here and there, that’s not really where this game’s interest lies.
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62453846c322b/1648703448793.jpg]
Or, as writer and narrative director Jon Ingold more succinctly puts it, “We’ve never made a game with a jump button before.” He hesitates to call this a platformer, partly because that implies a testing of reflexes – something else the game isn’t very interested in. Besides, jumping is far from all A Highland Song has to offer. There are climbing sections that nod to the stamina management of Breath Of The Wild’s own mountaineering, and light survival elements that have you seeking shelter to stay alive. Oh, and occasionally it turns into a rhythm-action game.
Laid out like this, its constituent parts might sound, in Ingold’s words, “like custard and noodles”. But they’re tied together by the game’s story, its setting, and character. “You’re roleplaying in the purest sense, in that you’re doing what the protagonist would be doing in this situation. If that involves a bit of dangerous rock climbing, then so be it. That’s the mechanic that has to follow that narrative.”
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62453846c322b/1648703449001.jpg]
The protagonist in question is Moira McKinnon, a teenager who lives with her mum in an isolated cottage on the edge of the Highlands, with limited contact with the wider world. “And then one day,” Ingold says, “she gets a letter that says, ‘You need to come now. Cross the Highlands, come now.” The letter is from her Uncle Hamish, a rather odd character who lives in a lighthouse on the coast. And so Moira runs away from home. “It’s a journey through the wilderness, in the shoes of someone who’s extremely ill-prepared for that but isn’t going to give up, and doesn’t have much to lose, in the hope of finding something wonderful.”
Humfrey, who was born in Dundee, knows what it’s like to head into this particular patch of wilderness. “I had an amazing teacher at primary school who loved the Highlands and took us up camping in very remote areas. On the minibus, he’d be telling us: ‘Please be very careful not to get hurt, because we won’t be able to get you to a hospital because the nearest one is a hundred miles away.”
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62453846c322b/1648703448935.jpg]
Later, as a teenager, in those first days of driving-license-granted freedom, Humfrey took another trip to the Highlands with friends. “We ended up getting lost and having to be rescued by a deer stalker. They were dropped off at the top of the first mountain they’d climbed, and had to find their way back to the car in the dark. “Just kind of stumbling through bogs in the pitch black, hoping you’re walking in the right direction. That was definitely an experience that I’ll never forget.” It’s not hard to imagine where A Highland Song’s survival elements have come from.
This isn’t survival in the sense of chopping and crafting, but more an extrapolation of Humfrey’s own experiences: worrying about temperature, which drops as you climb higher, and about the current position of the sun. Moira is a “fragile” character, Humfrey says, and if you want to keep her from dying, you’d better be prepared to seek shelter. This comes in the form of bothies – tumbledown buildings dotted across the Highlands that can be used by travellers passing by. “Nobody stops necessarily to ask where the bothies came from, who made them or why they’re there,” Ingold says. “They weren’t made so that ramblers can go and explore the Highlands like it’s some kind of theme park. They used to be the houses of people who lived there, who are not there anymore.”
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62453846c322b/1648703448944.jpg]
This is indicative of the ways A Highland Song draws on ...
Format - PC, Switch
Origin - UK
Release - TBA
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62453846c322b/1648703359520.jpg]
Hopping from stone to stone, a teenage girl narrowly avoids the splash of the stream below. Next she rushes down a slope, momentum carrying her forward. She scrambles up the side of a crag, careful not to lose her grip. At the top, as the girl finally stops to catch her breath, the camera pulls out to reveal the Scottish Highlands around her – then out farther still, demonstrating just how alone she is in this beautifully bleak landscape. There’s not another soul for miles.
After the crowded cruise-ship setting of Inkle’s previous release, the contrast is clear. “We’ve had a bit of feedback since announcing the game of, ‘Oh, this doesn’t look like a usual Inkle game’,” director Joseph Humfrey says. “That just makes me think: Oh, what is a usual Inkle game?” He’s got a point: Pendragon’s turn-based strategy doesn’t have much in common with the archaeological adventuring of Heaven’s Vault. But what people are thinking of, we suspect, is the source of 80 Days’ immense charm, what Overboard condensed into its half-hour runs. The characters. The writing. The joy, ultimately, of a good chat. While there are people to meet in the Highlands, here and there, that’s not really where this game’s interest lies.
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62453846c322b/1648703448793.jpg]
Or, as writer and narrative director Jon Ingold more succinctly puts it, “We’ve never made a game with a jump button before.” He hesitates to call this a platformer, partly because that implies a testing of reflexes – something else the game isn’t very interested in. Besides, jumping is far from all A Highland Song has to offer. There are climbing sections that nod to the stamina management of Breath Of The Wild’s own mountaineering, and light survival elements that have you seeking shelter to stay alive. Oh, and occasionally it turns into a rhythm-action game.
Laid out like this, its constituent parts might sound, in Ingold’s words, “like custard and noodles”. But they’re tied together by the game’s story, its setting, and character. “You’re roleplaying in the purest sense, in that you’re doing what the protagonist would be doing in this situation. If that involves a bit of dangerous rock climbing, then so be it. That’s the mechanic that has to follow that narrative.”
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62453846c322b/1648703449001.jpg]
The protagonist in question is Moira McKinnon, a teenager who lives with her mum in an isolated cottage on the edge of the Highlands, with limited contact with the wider world. “And then one day,” Ingold says, “she gets a letter that says, ‘You need to come now. Cross the Highlands, come now.” The letter is from her Uncle Hamish, a rather odd character who lives in a lighthouse on the coast. And so Moira runs away from home. “It’s a journey through the wilderness, in the shoes of someone who’s extremely ill-prepared for that but isn’t going to give up, and doesn’t have much to lose, in the hope of finding something wonderful.”
Humfrey, who was born in Dundee, knows what it’s like to head into this particular patch of wilderness. “I had an amazing teacher at primary school who loved the Highlands and took us up camping in very remote areas. On the minibus, he’d be telling us: ‘Please be very careful not to get hurt, because we won’t be able to get you to a hospital because the nearest one is a hundred miles away.”
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62453846c322b/1648703448935.jpg]
Later, as a teenager, in those first days of driving-license-granted freedom, Humfrey took another trip to the Highlands with friends. “We ended up getting lost and having to be rescued by a deer stalker. They were dropped off at the top of the first mountain they’d climbed, and had to find their way back to the car in the dark. “Just kind of stumbling through bogs in the pitch black, hoping you’re walking in the right direction. That was definitely an experience that I’ll never forget.” It’s not hard to imagine where A Highland Song’s survival elements have come from.
This isn’t survival in the sense of chopping and crafting, but more an extrapolation of Humfrey’s own experiences: worrying about temperature, which drops as you climb higher, and about the current position of the sun. Moira is a “fragile” character, Humfrey says, and if you want to keep her from dying, you’d better be prepared to seek shelter. This comes in the form of bothies – tumbledown buildings dotted across the Highlands that can be used by travellers passing by. “Nobody stops necessarily to ask where the bothies came from, who made them or why they’re there,” Ingold says. “They weren’t made so that ramblers can go and explore the Highlands like it’s some kind of theme park. They used to be the houses of people who lived there, who are not there anymore.”
[https://magztertemp.s3.amazonaws.com/1387349800/1648040462/articles/62453846c322b/1648703448944.jpg]
This is indicative of the ways A Highland Song draws on ...
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Edge Uk (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 2022