I saw the trailers for Songbird Symphony and knew instantly it was a game I wanted to play. It struck me as Wandersong meets Bomb Chicken in a rhythm-based puzzle platformer, and I really enjoyed both of those games. Mashing them together was a recipe for success from the start.
You get to take the role of Birb, the bird of unknown species, on their quest to learn the notes belonging to each bird you come across. Each note is tied to a different button, so the songs you play along your journey naturally become more complex. It makes for a smooth as silk difficulty curve with the music portions of the game. It never chucks a flurry of new buttons or rapid combos all at once, instead favouring steady introduction of one new input at a time, and maybe a new rhythm to pick up. Outside of the songs though, there’s a whole lot of platforming and exploration to do.
One thing I wasn’t expecting going in was the lack of anything harmful in the game. No insta-death spikes to catch you off guard, or bottomless pits to fall into. Instead, you can roam around in safety, and just have fun enjoying the music and discovering each area’s secrets. Your jump is quite floaty and holding the button glides, so that you can cover some really long distances if you find a high spot to jump from. Most important thing is that it’s responsive and feels right.
Don’t take the lack of challenge as a bad thing though. It was a breath of fresh air to just lay back and relax playing a game instead of taking on hard-as-nails challenges or trophy hunting like I often do. There’s so much to discover, from feathers belonging to birds you encounter to musical notes that build upon the soundtrack (a lovely feature, I have to say). I also massively appreciate that you can collect each item before moving onto the next area. Even if you can’t access something straight away, the story will always double back to that area when you do have the necessary unlock, which is brilliant. Sadly though, the over-world puzzles are mainly just box-sliding puzzles and copying musical patterns. They didn’t pose much of a challenge and the lack of variety is a shame.
What else do I need to cover before the all-important music section of this review? Umm… the story! I don’t want to spoil anything cause the game does have a major twist in store, but I will say I totally saw it coming about halfway into the game. It’s a pretty simple plot from beginning to end though, and incredibly linear too. Get new note, return to big tree, repeat. Near the end all the real big stuff kicks off, and that’s absolutely where I became most invested, but up till then it was definitely the gameplay that was carrying me onward.
Last thing before the music; the presentation. The pixel artwork is very pretty, and there’s a lot of unique birds to come across with their own animations, personalities, and even backing tracks to boot. The whole world feels alive and fleshed out with character and substance. As an example, you’ll often find insects fluttering about, or fish hiding in water, that can all be interacted with. My favourite little detail is that hanging lanterns will play a note when you jump into them, which is simply lovely. And yes, that is where I’m going to segway into the music portions of the game.
Throughout the game you’ll have to perform various songs to progress, which I’m pretty certain you cannot fail. I could be wrong though, as the worst grade I ever finished with was a B. Anyway, the songs have two sort of phases. Cutscene sections are where whoever you’ve come across will sing using karaoke-like text to accompany the melody. The actual “game” section will mix it up a lot though, with the basic idea being “press the right note at the right time,” usually to repeat a pattern you’ve just heard.
It’s pretty standard rhythm game stuff, but the interface for this changes a LOT. The notes in one song will drop from above, in another they’ll come from either side, and in another they’ll go round in circles. In most cases this isn’t a problem, but there were a few layouts that really didn’t work for me, and it was hard to work out in the moment what order the notes were coming in. The main one I had trouble with was in the cooking game, where notes were tossed across the middle of the screen. I’m sure you’ll understand if you play it yourself, but it’s really hard to tell if a first or second note is coming. A missed opportunity for me is that it would be much easier if the notes were coloured based on the button. I mean, Birb already emits a cute little coloured note anyway, why note match that to the incoming patterns too? It’d make it so much more readable across all the configurations in the songs.
Speaking of “the songs.” There were a few I absolutely adored and a few I heard way too much of. Standout tracks for me were in a casino area sung by the kookaburras, and the main theme which is genuinely moving and used to great effect in the final songs. My least favourite track was the backing music in the volcano area, that had an incredibly short and rather irritating loop. I had to use earphones to spare my housemate from it after a while; it’s a long area, so yeah, that wasn’t great. On the bright-side, all of the songs can be replayed to try and get a better rank with more accurate timing, so I naturally got an S rank on every track. Nothing’s locked behind S ranks, but it was just fun to do honestly. It was slow at first cause each song has a long cutscene intro, but I eventually discovered (entirely by accident cause nowhere is this told to you) that holding ‘B’ would skip that bit, making practising a much quicker process.
I do have a couple minor complaints though, as I do with most games, if not all. Firstly, on occasion the game will seem to stutter for a split second, which isn’t great when you’re playing a rhythm game with precise timings. This could be down to Switch limitations, but I’m hoping that a patch can optimise it a bit better so the little blips don’t blip. Also, I found a couple spots with bad collision, got stuck inside the ground at one point, and found a hole in the floor to the right of Chicken Castle where you can glide out of bounds with no difficulty whatsoever. Reloading the game returned me to my last save, but still, it’s worth mentioning that there is the minor glitch scattered about.
But in all honesty, I found Songbird Symphony‘s flaws to be inconsequential. I had a delightful time from beginning to end, breathing in the atmosphere and playing little ditties all over the place to reach the end. Its focus on fun and lighthearted adventure was a breath of fresh air and one I am more than happy to recommend. If you want a cute story with upbeat music and a wide variety of things to do, go out on a wing and pick this one up.
A digital copy of Songbird Symphony for Switch was provided by the developer.
Find Songbird Symphony on Switch here: https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/songbird-symphony-switch/
