The Lion’s Song

Genre: Visual Novel

Players: 1

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Review:

The Lion’s Song is a Visual Novel with light Graphic Adventure elements originally released on PC in 2016 and ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2018. It is a game comprised of four separate but loosely connected stories about four Austrians struggling with problems pertaining to creativity and inspiration.

As with most Visual Novel games, the presentation is one of the most important elements here, and The Lion’s Song does a good job, with a good aesthetic rendered with some nice pixel art in stylish sepia tones, some good environmental sounds that do a great job of setting a tone for each scene, and occasional uses of music that punctuate the game rather than accompany it, including the wonderful titular Lion’s Song. These all back the game’s excellent writing following the inner struggles the game’s characters deal with in pursuit of their low-stakes but still compelling goals.

As for the gameplay here, this is mostly about searching the environment for hot spots to interact with, and then making choices as they come up. Some of these choices don’t seem to have much effect, while others can resonate throughout all of the interconnected stories, and the game thankfully lets you return to previous stories to try different paths without having to redo the whole thing.

My biggest complaints regarding the game are that it sometimes isn’t clear just what the game wants you to do to proceed, a problem exacerbated by the game not making it clear what objects in the environment you can click on. This combines with the fact that there are at times multiple locations to explore to add in some unnecessary frustration to the gameplay of what is ultimately a game that isn’t really about gameplay – it’s primarily about the story. Also, be aware that this is a game that can be completed in under a couple hours, although there’s a good amount of replay value in seeing all of the alternate stories that unfold with different choices. Oh, and one more thing – don’t expect any of the Nintendo Switch’s unique features to come into play here – this game doesn’t make use of the touchscreen or motion controls.

While the gameplay elements here are unnecessarily frustrating, The Lion’s Song is still a delightful story that’s well worth playing through. If you’re looking for challenging puzzles or epic Earth-shattering stakes, you’ll likely be disappointed, but if you think you might enjoy a smaller, more personal collection of stories, you should definitely give this game a try.

tl;dr – The Lion’s Song is a Visual Novel with some light Graphic Adventure elements that has you playing through four interconnected stories about creativity and inspiration. This is a game that’s more about story than gameplay, which makes the frustrating game elements stick out more. However, the stories themselves are compelling, well-presented and well-told, especially if you fancy smaller, more personal tales.

Grade: B-

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