Project Songbird Review – Writer’s Block

FYRE Games, and especially studio lead Conner Rush, are no strangers to the horror genre. The studio previously showed a knack for crafting spooky atmospheres in smaller-scale projects like Summerland and We Never Left from Dread X Collection 5. With Project Songbird, the studio delivers a more ambitious horror experience that focuses on melding natural environments with strange and surreal dreamscapes, all while telling a deeply personal story about an artist struggling with their creativity.

"The story is largely told through conversations Dakota has with herself, both through dialogue during gameplay and through the notes she writes in her journal."

The main story of Project Songbird is a personal one. Protagonist Dakota, a musician performing under the stage name Neon Songbird, has been suffering from writer’s block after her last musical release failed to see any critical or commercial success. At the recommendation of her friend and record label executive, Rob, Dakota decides to spend some time away from the hustle and bustle of Pittsburgh, and retreats to a remote cabin in the Appalachian woods, largely cut off from the outside world thanks to a large body of water and the complete lack of mobile reception. Over the course of a month in the cabin, Dakota must rediscover her creative spark and put together a new album that she hopes will reconnect with both critics and her fans.

The story is largely told through conversations Dakota has with herself, both through dialogue during gameplay and through the notes she writes in her journal. Project Songbird also makes strong use of environmental storytelling. Just about everything you find during exploration, from a small cove of beautiful flowers to a strange easel in an open field, has at least some relevance to Dakota’s emotional and physical journey. Notes scattered throughout the game range from warnings not to go near a creepy remote location to apocalyptic logs left by someone who may have met a gruesome fate in the area.

"Dakota decides to spend some time away from the hustle and bustle of Pittsburgh, and retreats to a remote cabin in the Appalachian woods, largely cut off from the outside world"

Project Songbird’s story is surprisingly refreshing because its stakes remain personal rather than world-ending. There is no larger threat to the world that can only be stopped by Dakota and her shotgun. Rather, it is an emotional journey for the character, which you get to guide her through since you also get to play a role in the kind of music she can create. The story is elevated by Valerie Rose Lohman’s strong lead performance (whose previous credit includes What Remains of Edith Finch). The supporting cast is also quite good, with characters voiced by Maddy Murphy, Aleks Le, Jonah Scott, and even director Conner Rush.

Visually, Project Songbird definitely has its moments of utter beauty. There are wonderful little tableaus just about everywhere you look, from the dense forests you start out in as you walk towards the cabin, to even just the interiors of the tiny little cabin itself, with all of Dakota’s instruments and recording equipment lying around. There is also plenty of visual variety on display, from dilapidated buildings to dim underground corridors. Some of the more surreal scenes have also been wonderfully directed, with one of my favorites being when I found a door to nowhere on some rocks.

The fact that it doesn’t put all of its eggs in the photorealism basket also helps. Instead, Project Songbird focuses on a more stylistic look, with a warmly saturated palette in its early hours before dipping into cooler tones as things start getting creepier.

"Visually, Project Songbird definitely has its moments of utter beauty."

Unfortunately, while its visual style is great, its technical shortcomings do reveal its small-scale indie roots and likely limited budget. For this review, I played through it on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, 32 GB of DDR5-6000 RAM, and a Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU. With all the graphical settings maxed out and the resolution at 2560×1440, I was easily able to hit my display’s frame rate limit of 144 FPS. However, there were also plenty of moments where I experienced hitching and dropped frames. This seemed to happen mainly during traversal, suggesting some streaming issues as new parts of the world loaded in. There is also noticeable pop-in, especially in the foliage and some textures.

Project Songbird isn’t an overly complex game. You won’t find much in the way of complicated stealth mechanics or inventory management that survival horror games often feature as key aspects of their game design. Rather, Project Songbird likes to keep things simple. Much of the gameplay revolves around walking around the beautiful world and interacting with various objects to solve simple puzzles. Along the way, you might end up coming face to face with surreal visuals or horrifying creatures, which you will then have to deal with using your weapon of choice.

It is also an incredibly short experience, with a runtime of around 5 hours, potentially more if you have trouble with some of the game’s puzzles. While the simplicity of gameplay goes a long way in keeping you engaged with the story and world, there is unfortunately very little real depth. Even the game’s combat is simply a matter of pointing your gun at an enemy and pulling the trigger, while backpedaling to maintain distance from enemies.

"You won’t find much in the way of complicated stealth mechanics or inventory management that survival horror games often feature as key aspects of their game design."

While combat is simple, the exploration aspects of Project Songbird have more going on. Sure, you can simply ignore most of your surroundings as you rush your way through the story, only catching the major narrative beats. However, two of the tools Dakota is equipped with right from the beginning are a camera and a sound recorder. The former has more utility, allowing you to capture important scenes that you can look back at. The latter, on the other hand, is a lot more interesting. During exploration, you might hear a beep. This is an indicator that there is an interesting sound that can be recorded. Any of these recorded sounds can later be used while creating new music, adding more depth to the album that Dakota is trying to record.

All in all, Project Songbird doesn’t ask too much of its players; it’s a short experience that focuses more on slow-burn atmosphere-setting than throwing jumpscares at you all the time. Combined with the fact that combat and exploration are both fairly simple, that makes it an easy horror game to recommend to genre fans. The technical issues that do exist are minor in the grand scheme of things, and even the occasional dip in the frame rate doesn’t have much impact since this isn’t exactly a combat-centric game.

Dakota’s journey through writer’s block is handled well, and the themes of this narrative will likely resonate with many players, even if they might not be musicians themselves. Pairing this with strong performances by a phenomenal cast of voice actors and the relatively short runtime makes Project Songbird a great way to spend some time on a weekend.

This game was reviewed on PC.