Conner Rush — the creative lead, director, musician, developer, spokesperson, and all-around polymath behind FYRE Games studio — can’t be accused of phoning it in with his latest effort.
He’s clearly poured everything into Project Songbird, a first-person horror title that is, yes, a commercial product aiming to reach as wide an audience as possible. However, at the same time, it often more strongly resembles a therapeutic exercise being carried out for the sole benefit of its maker. One that we’re tactlessly intruding upon.
Taking the “write what you know” philosophy to its absolute extreme, this is an incredibly vulnerable offering that almost feels like it was never really intended for public consumption. Rush bares his soul throughout the game’s 4–5-hour runtime, weaving a deeply confessional story that works through many of his personal anxieties about what it means to be an artist, as well as the crippling self-doubts that creep in when you don’t believe that you’re fulfilling your true purpose in life.
For the avoidance of doubt, this is not a case of the beholder projecting their own insular feelings onto a piece of media. On the contrary, Rush makes it abundantly clear what’s on his mind here with an authorial preface right up front, repeated fourth wall breaks, and increasingly meta sequences that obscure the lines between him and his insecurity-ridden protagonist. It gets to the point where the whole thing comes across as borderline invasive. Like you’re not meant to be witnessing something so raw and unguarded.
Facing the Music
The closest thing you could compare Project Songbird to — with all of its semi-autobiographical elements, introspective broodings, direct addresses to the audience, and appeals to universal human experiences — is not another video game but rather an intensely personal album. Which is quite appropriate, given that’s exactly what our lead character is working on when we first meet them!
Dakota (also known by the stage name: “Neon Songbird”) is a young singer-songwriter who has enjoyed moderate success in the past but is now going through something of a creative rut. Critical response to their latest release wasn’t exactly euphoric, and fans have wholly rejected the radical new direction they’ve been trying to take their latest material in. Meanwhile, the record label has been all but begging them to return to the earlier sound that made them so zeitgeisty to begin with.
Alas, neither music nor lyrics are coming as naturally to Dakota as they used to, and they’re starting to fret that maybe they’ve peaked too young and will never make a truly great track again. Giving us an insight into their crisis of confidence, one revealing journal entry confirms that they just aren’t deriving the same pleasure from the creative process that they once did, and are kind of “forcing it” now.
So, at the behest of their friend-cum-manager, Dakota agrees to embark on an artistic retreat in a last-ditch attempt to rediscover their mojo. Going all Henry David Thoreau, they drop off the grid by renting out an isolated cabin in the Appalachian wilderness (where many other struggling artists are said to have been touched by some divine muse and ended up producing their crowning works). That means no technology. No internet trolls. No snarky reviewers. Just the natural splendour of the American Southeast and a vinyl collection full of indie deep cuts to get the juices flowing.
In short, it’s the perfect environment to get back into the swing of things and block out the distractions of the modern world. Or so it would seem. In reality, Dakota finds all new ways to procrastinate amidst the great outdoors, whether it’s by taking scenic woodland strolls, running trivial errands, or getting hung up on annoying plumbing issues. You know, pretty much anything to avoid doing some writing (hey, we’ve all been there!)
That all changes one night, though, when Dakota is awoken by strange whispering emanating from the treeline. Following these eerie voices, they stumble across a will-o’-the-wisp that beckons them onwards into a surreal dream realm constructed out of their worst memories and places from a traumatic past. Here, like many others before them, Dakota inadvertently makes a pact with an eldritch force. One that gives them the vision to finally create that magnum opus they’ve been aspiring towards.
Of course, this is also a Faustian bargain that exacts a heavy toll in return. As our protagonist gets more and more addicted to the intoxicating power of unbridled inspiration and productivity, they also start to lose their grip on reality. Days blur together, they slip into lengthy fugue states from which they can recall nothing, and whatever entity they made this secret deal with becomes increasingly aggressive in trying to collect its payment.
For Art’s Sake
For anyone who has ever pursued a creative goal, Project Songbird’s script (penned authentically by Rush) cuts painfully close to the bone. It explores the heartbreak of falling out of love with— and perhaps even growing to resent — your art, raising probing questions like: “Who are you if the passion you once defined yourself by has faded?” and “What’s the point of carrying on if even you don’t believe in your dreams anymore?”
Whether you’ve successfully churned out several DIY albums or never once picked up a guitar, anyone can relate to Dakota’s worry that the very thing they were put on this earth to do is now beyond their abilities. We all know that feeling of comparing yourself to others who seem to effortlessly excel, while you’re trying so damn hard. And we can also identify with what it’s like to entertain those dark thoughts that take root when you consider throwing in the towel for good.
Even as it becomes clearer and clearer that the occult contract they’ve entered into is going to take far more than it gives, Dakota keeps on following that wisp into mortal danger. And you can’t really blame them! After all, what other choice do you have when the passion that you’ve tied your entire sense of self-worth to is on the line?
You can tell that Rush is writing from (all too real) experience when it comes to this stuff and that he achingly identifies with his protagonist. Not only because the characterisation of Dakota rings so true, but because he regularly pulls you out of the diegesis to make the connection between himself and his proxy as transparent as possible. We won’t spoil the specifics of any of these meta digressions, except to say that the title literally opens with a framing device in which you wander around the developer’s apartment while he toils away on Project Songbird. From there, we seamlessly transition into the game proper and find ourselves exploring Dakota’s uncannily similar domestic life. So, you can safely assume that everything that follows is as much about the title’s creator as it is about the inhabitants of its fictional world.
Speaking of which, that world very much draws from Rush’s personal life too. The Appalachian Forest in which most of the action takes place is based on the area where he grew up, with certain landmarks being lifted from his hometown, and the owner of the rental cabin is named after his own Grandpa. There’s even a fun mechanic where you can sift through the vinyl collection Dakota hauled up with her to the woods and listen to tracks from some of Rush’s peers in the West Virginian music scene (all while your avatar delivers Patrick Bateman-esque soliloquies about the respective bands and their output).
A Tortured Artist
Kicking back and listening to indie tunes isn’t the only “cosy” activity you can derive pleasure from in Project Songbird, as the daylight sections of the game take on an almost walking sim quality. In addition to just stretching your legs and listening to Dakota’s monologue, you can indulge your inner shutterbug by taking snaps with a Polaroid camera, messing around with instruments in the cabin, and — in one of the most addictive side-quests we’ve undertaken in recent memory — use your directional microphone to capture the sounds of nature for sampling in future Neon Songbird tracks.
Honestly, it’s during these more tranquil moments that the game is at its best, leading to you getting intimately acquainted with your compelling lead character (soulfully played by Valerie Rose Lohman, in an award-worthy performance) and immersing yourself in their surroundings. It’s got a slow and deliberate pace to it that may test the patience of those who just want to get on with the supernatural shenanigans, but, should you take the time to engage with all the unique interactions, it can be rewarding downtime that enriches the frights to come.
On that note, when night falls, the game does a dramatic heel turn. As soon as you cross the boundary into — for lack of a better description — the “other world”, more traditional survival-horror elements are steadily introduced. You’ll be tasked with solving Metroidvania puzzles, completing a few stealth encounters, and even engaging in resource-draining combat. A sharp contrast, then, to your diurnal objectives.
Taking you on a tour of Dakota’s most formative memories, there’s an echo of Outlast 2’s hallucinatory school flashbacks here. Meanwhile, the way in which the claustrophobic geography shifts and loops around recalls P.T., and the inclusion of mixed-media gimmickry warrants favourable comparisons to Alan Wake.
Yet for all the gaming reference points that spring to mind, it’s actually cinematic touchstones that appear to have had the most tangible impact on Project Songbird’s sensibilities. Specifically, Rush has cited the house style of A24 as a major influence.
Now, that doesn’t give you much to go on, seeing as A24 is effectively a financial backer when all is said and done and not an artistic voice unto itself. Aside from maybe Disney, there aren’t too many studios out there that function as recognisable brands, and this particular company has had involvement with such diverse projects as Lady Bird, Swiss Army Man, and Marty Supreme. There’s not much connective tissue between any of them, apart from the fact that they all made your normie relatives ask: “So, you actually like this stuff?”
To be fair, it’s evident that what Rush is evoking here is that pigeonholed, easily marketable version of the A24 legacy that is used to sell a very specific type of film. You know, slowburn, atmospheric chillers with folk horror underpinnings, traumatising imagery and, ideally, flashes of naked elderly people. All of which are boxes that Project Songbird dutifully checks!
To narrow it down further, we’d say it’s especially indebted to Robert Eggers’ and Ari Aster’s contributions to the canon. In terms of the former, traces of Hereditary can be detected in certain visual flourishes (like when infernal red light leaks out through the windows of your cabin).
Elsewhere, Rush shares many of Eggers’ authorial fixations and recurring motifs. For example, we’ve got a main character exiling themselves to a remote location, people driving themselves to the brink of insanity for the sake of upholding their convictions, and a heavy emphasis on folklore. Not to mention, there are some stylistic affectations that are clearly inspired by The Lighthouse director’s oeuvre, including aspect ratio shifts and flirtations with striking visual formats. The Witch is even namedropped during one missable line of dialogue, explicitly acknowledging it as a key text.
Not Quite My Tempo
Yet despite all of its jumbled inspirations, Project Songbird crucially never forgets to forge an identity of its own. On the contrary, it blends together all of Rush’s many loves (arthouse horror, walking sims like What Remains of Edith Finch, and, of course, music) into something that is often unique and exciting.
And the highs are very, very high indeed. There are at least a couple of ingenious puzzles that’ll test your problem-solving skills under pressure, and the emotional beats land way harder than you might expect (again, Lohman deserves all the praise for her devastating turn as Dakota).
As for the survival-horror side of the equation, there is one protracted set piece that is amongst the scariest we’ve endured in a hot minute. It tasks you with playing a series of musical arrangements on keyboards scattered around a dingy labyrinth, all while being stalked by a Weeping Angel-esque golem that is capable of advancing whenever you break eye contact. Having to perfect your scales here — sweatily consulting a reference sheet as this panting abomination breathes down your neck— is the closest you’ll ever come to a stressful video game adaptation of Whiplash. Suffice it to say, you’ll be rushing, not dragging!
If anything, Project Songbird could benefit from having a few more of these scenarios that cleverly incorporate the story’s musical themes. Because whenever you are thrust into more straightforward encounters, it can be a bit lacklustre.
In one of the game’s many fourth wall breaks, Rush candidly admits that combat is a little outside his wheelhouse and that he is more at ease in the walking-sim space. This discomfort shows in the finished product, on account of clunky shooting mechanics and melee that is quite ungainly.
Granted, Dakota is not meant to be a Navy SEAL, and you can understand why the developer wouldn’t want them to be performing suplexes on the monsters they bump into, but it’d be nice if they had at least some degree of hand-eye coordination! As it stands, the janky parrying, floaty axe swings, and sluggish movement make you wonder if your character is meant to have knocked back a few beers (or perhaps a few six-packs) before each skirmish.
There’s also a distinct absence of audio-visual feedback to let you know when a creature is on your tail or attacking from behind. Even more glaringly, there’s a disappointing lack of enemy and location variety to keep things fresh. You just keep going up against bland, featureless wood sprites in bland, featureless corridors.
With this combat feeling so deflating, you’ll often find yourself prioritising evasion tactics instead. Not because you want to conserve resources, mind you — as you would in, say, Resident Evil — but because getting into fights simply isn’t worth either the trouble or the time.
Unfortunately, that’s not the only area where Project Songbird slips up, as we also have to deal with an underwhelming conclusion. Spoiler prohibitions make this a tricky one to explain, as we’re not allowed to go into detail about anything that transpires past the game’s second act, but Dakota’s journey is hastily wrapped up to prioritise an eleventh-hour change in focus that (while ambitious and experimental) isn’t what we’ve been invested in.
Again, we can’t say too much, only that entire plot threads are left dangling in the wind, and that we essentially cut away from what should be the final confrontation of the story, subsequently returning to the action when it’s been resolved off-screen!
Given the A24 inspiration, some ambiguity should be expected here. Yet there’s a fine line between leaving things open to interpretation and outright ditching narrative concepts altogether. Throughout the story, Rush introduces fascinating mysteries about a local witch, a tragic mining disaster, and these Appalachian creatures that constantly harass Dakota, and none of it is adequately resolved. Of course, you don’t want the answers spoon-fed to you, especially not if you’re trying to do the whole Robert Eggers thing, but there still needs to be some closure!
What just about redeems the final act is the catharsis we get for Dakota’s emotional journey. The way her creative crisis and historic trauma come together at the end is moving and sensitively handled, with a musical coda that’s legitimately powerful. While you might emerge disappointed by how the supernatural side of the story peters out, it’s hard to fault this particular arc.
Project Songbird might not be perfect then, but it remains an uncompromised personal vision that makes you feel things. Sure, sometimes those feelings are of bewilderment and frustration, but on other occasions, they could be terror, sorrow, and even a little bit of healing. In a landscape of AAA blockbusters that are fun but don’t really mean all that much, you’ve got to admire something that aspires to say something. And what Rush says here will connect with a lot of people.
Review code provided by publisher. Project Songbird will release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC via Steam on March 26.
