Developer Old Moon understood what it wanted to do when it put together its 2D adventure Ghost Song. It is a focused effort in creating a game that puts players to the test with clever puzzles and a heavy-hearted storyline, while at the same time giving an honorable nod to Nintendo’s Super Metroid in structure, difficulty, entertainment, and creativity. While it lives in the shadow of Nintendo’s powerhouse franchise, Ghost Song does bring a more dark and sinister tale with it that places it in a horror category of its own. It also presents some new ideas in how it structures its backend system that makes for a more engaging time.
Let’s get right into it.
Story of Solemnness and Mystery
Ghost Song revolves around a Deadsuit that awakens after being dormant for so long. Not knowing what its objective is or what it should be doing, the well-armed and combat-ready being needs to explore an alien planet to unravel not only the planet’s mystery but also its own. Both are sure to hold some horrifying revelations.
Stories like Ghost Song are unique experiences, where the user uncovers the mysteries of the game with the main character. It’s a hand-in-hand story experience that works and motivates the player to keep going to see the micro-mysteries revealed and the pieces of the narrative puzzle slowly come together. Along the way, the story is sprinkled with hints here and there that the gamer can guess and start putting together a more focused view of what exactly is up. It gives you a reason to explore the areas and get through the trials and tribulations that the gameplay offers. It also adds to the overall atmosphere of the game drawing closer to a horror experience than just a run-of-the-mill 2D adventure. Being a huge fan of the Alien franchise helped me to get into the gloomy mood of this game and the story pushed me over the edge with appreciating what Old Moon was trying to do.
Without giving too much away, the story will reel you into the gameplay experience and act as a compliment rather than a separate focus. This is a great narrative design that should be praised.
Gameplay with Metroid in Mind
I’m sure the developers at Old Moon would admit to being in love with the Metroid franchise as small footprints from the 80s/90s Metroid series lay scattered throughout the design of Ghost Song. That isn’t at all a bad thing because that series was and is epic, so much so that there is a genre partially named after it. Anyway, as I played through Ghost Song it was obvious how much of its design was influenced by Nintendo’s series.
Beginning with character design, Ghost Song features a one-armed suited hero that sports a modular weapon on the other arm. It’s about as Samus Aran as Samus Aran gets. Much like the Nintendo character, the Deadsuit doesn’t reveal its hand of what it is or what its purpose is, almost creating a cloud of mystery that is locked away while it’s doing what it is doing. Samus did this with the first iteration of Metroid, where we didn’t know much about the main character until ‘Justin Bailey’ came along and revealed to us a bit more about who ‘she’ was in the suit. Samus wasn’t in a precarious amnesia state when she started, but the idea of the unknown was prominent in her adventure. While Nintendo didn’t have the luxury of a big reveal and added a thick narrative as Ghost Song does, the overall mystery of the main character and their design is straight from the pages of Metroid. That isn’t a knock, rather it’s a nod to Old Moon for giving props to a game that started everything for future game titles to come.
While the story of Ghost Song is less straightforward than that of Samus and produces a clear air of mystery, the gameplay design in GS has our hero running through alien tunnels, upgrading weapons and features of the Deadsuit’s weaponry (and defense), while trying to find ways to traverse puzzles in the game that provide step-by-step access to the ‘next thing’. This is a classic blueprint to a metroidvania game and one that works here. What I particularly like about Ghost Song’s design is that while it does share some similarities with Metroid, and specifically Super Metroid, it goes a long way to push its own design further. For example, the game doesn’t give you much to work with regarding what weapon you need to get into new sections of the alien planet you’re exploring. I spent the first 5-6 hours of this game trying to open a robot-controlled door that popped its eye out to scan me every time I approached it. In Metroid, running into something like this would point me toward a rocket arm solution to blast my way through. The color-coded tipoff would provide me with enough silent details to understand what must be done. For Ghost Song, the solution to this entry puzzle runs a bit deeper and didn’t present itself until further down the line. Going along with its narrative mystery, the game forces you to go out and find a solution, then come back and try it to see if it works. It’s not obvious, no tipoffs, and it makes you work for it. I must have acquired 2-3 weapons before finding the right solution, which ultimately made sense (not giving it away). There are more work and less obvious puzzles to solve in Ghost Song that push this Metroid blueprint just a bit further than it is usually pushed.
As for other deeper parts, the modules that the Deadsuit acquires along the way are more specific and flexible than what you would find in a Metroid game. The design is broken down into three key elements of the Deadsuit’s upgradeable features. All three work together with each other in a song and dance to make the gameplay experience more complicated and entertaining.
First, the most basic of the bunch is collecting small green tokens that allow you to upgrade your suit. The tokens are acquired by disposing of enemies, and the currency allows you to upgrade your suit’s attributes. Those attributes include:
- Vigor – Your basic defense that allows you to take more damage.
- Resolve – Works with your energy pool and stamina (you’ll need the latter to survive).
- GunPower – Do you need me to explain this one?
These can be upgraded to a mysterious and very dead robot at the beginning of the game. The more tokens you collect, the faster you upgrade your character and expand them in specific categories that include HP, energy, and the most important that comes into play with the others – Power Capacity. Before we dive into the latter category, it should be noted that the game has a Dark Souls personality with tokens. Should you die somewhere along the way during your exploration, your tokens will stay at your death spot. Should you die before re-collecting those tokens, then you lose those tokens permanently. This risk/reward balance plays heavily into the difficulty of the game and creates a well-placed grind to the entire gameplay process. While you’re certainly going to have curse-y moments where you risked too much and got caught up in a bad situation that lost you tokens, the concept of that challenge creates a new line of thinking that makes the experience so much deeper than the usual metroidvania. Believe me, I cursed quite a bit and took breaks often. I suck at Dark Souls, so my anxiety to avoid taking chances was through the roof.
My own faults and failures in popular game series aside, Power Capacity is a vital piece of Ghost Song’s design. This particular category plays into the next two gameplay attributes on this list – Blaster and Suit Modules. While the retained aspect of Metroid arrives in collecting and finding these modules through exploration and boss fights, these modules carry with them a certain amount of Power Capacity requirements to use. For example, if you wanted to use several different weapons together in the game, such as a powerful blaster or a set of rockets, you could equip both, but at a Power Capacity cost. Each blaster module comes with a PC cost that allows you to carry certain weapons while juggling the idea that you can mix/match as you please but only allow as many weapons as you can afford. To switch between weapons, you must find a safe place to shut down your Deadsuit and go into the menu to change the modules. It’s a strategic juggling act at times. It works well because of what you have to think about as you play the game and understand what enemies lie ahead of you. Knowing the best blaster module combo to use to progress is vital for the game’s entertainment value. This is very much user-driven.
Related to blaster modules are suit modules. While the blaster modules are offensively entertaining, the suit modules bring a certain ability to your person that doesn’t involve blowing the shit out of an object. These modules affect the Deadsuit by healing it, springing healing flowers randomly, bringing down stamina heat that builds as you constantly use your weapon or other aspects like forcing tokens to come to you after you dispose of an enemy instead of you coming to them (think of a magnet – now you have it). In my opinion, this category of attributes is far more important and interesting than the blaster modules. They provide a more useful aspect of survival improvement. This is a step further than what you would find in a Metroid game and a good step at that.
Juggling these backend categories with Power Capacity makes for a more enriching and cerebral gaming experience that takes the genre just a bit further and deeper than it would typically. Old Moon did a great job of bringing this part of the game to the forefront as a driving part of the adventure.
Now, speaking of adventure, what would a solemn space adventure be without creepy-ass enemies? It would be a boring space adventure! If I had to knock the game somewhere, and this is a polite knock, it would be the basic enemy variety in this game and how hard it is to take down baddies. Starting with the former, the game has some early bland enemies in the first seven hours. You’ll run into several iterations of the same pale-skin creatures that have just slight differences in their attacks. One set will just slowly creep toward you. One set will try to punch you into next Tuesday. Even one set will turn purple and fire giant pimples at you. They’re all gross and all an H.R. Giger nightmare design, but there just isn’t enough of them to keep one’s attention all the time. During gameplay, I felt like I was running the same gambit repeatedly due to the lack of immediate enemy variety. Eventually, as I progressed in exploration, and with the help of random happenings and side character stories through NPC and bosses, this became less and less of a problem as the game moved forward. Basic enemy variety, especially at the beginning was lacking in my opinion. I wanted a bit more out of the enemies and wanted more of them.
What the game lacked in variety, it made up for in difficulty. There were times when enemies just wouldn’t go down immediately and sometimes it felt like I was hitting the wall with lesser baddies. For example, the fist-punching pale alien was annoying as shit to bring down. Even with more powerful weapons, it still felt like a chore. The combination of weapon burnout (limited stamina) didn’t help the process either. I do understand why weapon burnout was included, as it does add an element of strategy to the enemy approach, but some enemies just felt like they took forever to dispose of in the game. Maybe that’s more me than the game, but I felt it regardless of the reason.
Common enemies aside, the bosses are outstanding in Ghost Song. Each one has its own small backstory, some more tragic than others, and each brings its own set of difficulties to the table. The first few fights will provide you with patterns you can pick up on, which is great when you want to feel like you’re making headway in the game. When you get into mid-game bosses, you’re going to see the difficulty ratcheting up. There were times when I thought I had hit a wall with mid-game bosses and couldn’t imagine going further. That’s how hard it gets. Even with obvious attack patterns, the bosses get more complicated and more Dark Souls-like, which should play well into those sick people out there that enjoy that type of gameplay (respectfully sick). The bosses make up for the lack of enemy variety and you’ll know when you meet one. They add to the overall narrative, and the mysterious atmosphere, and are truly horrifying on many different levels (visually, tragically, etc.).
What else is there to Ghost Song? Exploration is the last big key to the game. One of the more attractive features of a Metroid game is exploring and uncovering the next piece of the puzzle. The map in Ghost Song is huge, difficult to access at times without the right combination, and visually engaging. The game starts off slowly with restrictive entry to most areas. Then it starts to chip away a bit and eventually loosens up with more upgrades, boss fights, and general explorative discoveries. It’s akin to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night where you might feel like you’re making slow progress, but as you do more in the game, you uncover so much more as a reward. I love those types of games, as they’re incredibly rewarding and, more importantly fulfilling. The addition of a creepy ambiance and mysterious figures that lay down breadcrumbs for the narrative only motivates you to explore more of the game. Being encouraged without knowing you’re being encouraged makes for a good time.
Overall, the gameplay design and the execution of Ghost Song are mostly masterful. It makes the metroidvania genre a bit deeper and presents some interesting backend ideas that work out well to make it more engaging to the player. It could use some enemy variety with lesser enemies, but it makes up that shortfall with better bosses. A proper move for the most part.
On that note, let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
Old Moon’s Ghost Song has all the markings of a good metroidvania game, literally giving a tip-of-the-hat to the Metroid series, and works to make the experience deeper than a replicated version of a Nintendo classic.
