Project Songbird is unpredictable, making it all the more horrifying

I wake in a messy apartment, empty cans and bottles lining the floor and clothes strung across the furniture, with a dry, raspy throat and a pounding head. I let out a little groan at the missed call and voicemail from my agent wanting to give feedback on last night’s song submission. With a desperate need for caffeine, I trudge to the kitchen, wading through my own tangible hopelessness, wallowing in the only sort of tortured pity a creative could conjure.

After a brief phone call and some hard truths from my surprisingly encouraging agent, I’m off to a cabin in the woods to find myself in the melody of a trickling stream and the whistling of the wind through the forest pines, you know, all that juicy ‘woe is me, but nature will sort it out’ stuff. Because I’m suffering from writer’s block – an ailment that’s plagued me since experiencing the loss of a loved one. And now Project Songbird’s creator is talking to ME, which is equally unsettling. I

I think, primarily, they are just proud of the game they’ve created, but these messages feel like something else, something sinister, something that I last felt when I played Inscryption, and the game within a game within a game became all too real.

But I’m at the cabin, and I’m playing as Dakota, and they seem pretty relaxed – it constantly looks like the golden hour, so the sky and forest have that promising amber hue… but something just doesn’t feel right, and that’s not because I know this is a horror game, it’s because the first tutorials teach me how to run, duck, and quickly switch directions. I also pick up a bullet and decide to take it with me – a sign of the times ahead. I’m reminded by the game’s creator that Dakota is fallible, and if I keep dying, then I will fail, and I’m becoming scared that they aren’t scared… but so far, there’s nothing to fear, apart from the repercussions of a bad song.

I’m at the cabin to write the wrongs for my latest album and, in a particular cutting remark from my agent, to “show everyone that you’ve still got it,” by writing something fans will love, like my old stuff. But as Dakota points out, I’m not that person anymore.

I spend the first day putting some tunes together, and I take my axe and field recorder to smash through boarded-up areas to explore the surroundings, and record sounds like the birds singing, or – there it is – that trickling stream that I was promised. I come to a clearing, and Dakota whispers, or shouts, I’m not sure which, because I’m too scared to take it in, that there’s something there. In the middle of the clearing is a painting, one that reminds them of a person – it’s out of place, of course it is. A noise – it’s coming from the cabin, so we race back, and in doing so, we begin the descent into the horrors of Project Songbird.

At night, there are outside disturbances, followed by lucid dreams of a past life and memories I’d rather forget, but must face to forge ahead. All while enemies lurk, wailing in the half-light of flickering corridors, long-limbed bodies contorting to fit the spaces in my own mind. There’s more action than I expect when eventually confronted with these monsters, and a decent amount of puzzles to progress and escape back into the golden light of the leafy campsite.

In the cold light of day, I retrace my footsteps back to the small boat I arrived on, met with the option to stay or leave. I stand for a moment, watching the water lap the shore, then turn away and head back to the cabin, ready to face something worse than writer’s block.