HomeFeaturesSongs of Silence
Rally Point: Oh phew, Songs of Silence is only pretending to be a card gameNo big deal
No big deal
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Chimera Entertainment/H2 Interactive
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Chimera Entertainment/H2 Interactive
Clambering deep out of the Contemplation Pit, where reading reviews or opinions or, god help you, Takes, is forbidden, I am curious to learn how people have been categorisingSongs of Silence. Its structure most resemblesSongs of Conquestor Heroes of Might and/or Magic, but with little RPG emphasis or base building, and minimal tactical fighting.
Taxonomy is arbitrary and often unimportant at the end of the day, but I am very glad to firmly rule it out of one category: It’s not a bloody card game. It looks like one, sure. You do most things with cards, and characters acquire more cards over time. But even if you absolutely, utterly, and correctly loathe card-based systems, this game has none.
It’s about warlords towing armies around a strikingly pretty top down map, in turns, with gridless movement, to bash neutral armies and capture towns for XP and riches. Excellently, gold and army-boosting artifacts come as treasure trains that must be escorted home cash in, lest the enemy capture them after a fight. Units can’t be levelled, so losing them isn’t painful beyond the cost to replace them.
So how do you recruit more units? Cards. How do you upgrade your settlements, or use a hero’s powers to install a special building in them? Cards. How do you fight battles? Cards! A month ago I would have read this, and then needed the next fifteen minutes to inhale deeply enough for a suitably expressive sigh.
But it’s not a card game. Genuinely.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Chimera Entertainment/H2 Interactive
There’s been a trend in recent years, not just of dedicated deckbuilders (roguelike with crafting and survival and-), but of shoving card games into the square hole of things I’d otherwise enjoy. The former is fine. They’re Not My Thing. I can hate them all I want without doing any harm to an entirely valid thing that people clearly enjoy. I’ve evenrecommendedafew, and only partly to use as a shield when calling you all terrible. The latter, despite my whingeing, is also fine and valid. It’s how we get new and weirder things.
There’s a third manifestation of The Card, though: a means to present information. I interpretedShadow Empire’sstratagem cards as a way to represent your advisors' proposals - as though each was a file on your desk that someone had helpfully drawn a little picture on, because that’s the kind of thing Dictator Sin would probably appreciate.Star Traders Colon Frontierspresented activities like spying and exploration as cards - each a possible outcome, which many character skills remove or replace to simulate your crew affecting events. You didn’t gather cards, and they didn’tdoanything. Whether to count these as “card games” is debatable. Whether I don’t because I don’twantthem to be is an even less compelling debate.
With Songs of Silence though, I’m going further: the cards are a mere affectation. With the pedantic exception of levelling up heroes (a “pick one of 3 skills” roguelike model), at no point are cards drawn, shuffled, replaced, or discarded. They are merely a UI. You could replace them with buttons orMMOaction bars and the design would be identical. Marginally better, even, because the cards literally get in the way, obscuring each other from sight, with pretty illustrations that make it difficult to tell which is which. To level a hero, a card appears on the map, and you must drag it onto the hero’s model, which is quite possibly the most trivial amount of pointless labour I will ever complain about. I am devoting far, far too much attention to this fairly petty criticism, but I don’t care. Cards must be stopped.
But I enjoy Songs of Silence. It has a refreshing pace, thanks to doing away with HoMM’s building sites and constant resource hoovering. Most intriguingly though, it replaces turn-based tactics with an auto battler. “Battles run themselves with little player direction” isn’t new of course - a moment’s thought traces it as far back as the Settlers - but I’d never paid it much attention as a subgenre until SoS opened my mind somewhat to its potential.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Chimera Entertainment/H2 Interactive
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Chimera Entertainment/H2 Interactive
Hostile armies run at each other and exchange tense emails until one side dies or leaves to get a life. It takes at most a few minutes of simply watching, and periodically (hnngh) dragging a card to fire off constantly-recharging spells/powers. There are none ofEagarlnia’sshowstoppers, but there’s some spectacle (notably the Void faction’s many sinister orbs), and a tonne of detail as every stablad runs around autonomously, magic artillery literally throw ammunition with massive hands, and lancers penetrate targets without slowing, and leave melee to wheel around for another charge.
Some spells are disappointing, some upgrades the dull “+2 instead of +1”, and of course your anti-demon troops target one squirrel while demons eat your archers. But that’s why you examined the enemy in advance, and arranged your troops to account for their simple brains. The benefit is dropping the chore of telling everyone what to do. Big encounters don’t mean having to make 80 decisions back to back, or lose the war because you misclicked seven turns ago. Beyond periodically aiming and timing a spell, your strategising is done, and it’s time to relax and see how you did.
Every unit has multiple qualities (what it is), and abilities on top (what it does) like flight, negating magic defence, or extra damage to foes with specific qualities. Some lend bonuses to similar allies: A Hearthguard is pretty weak, but three of them reinforce each other, more than doubling their strength. Add a unit and artifact that buffs their qualities (Starborn, Infantry, Guardian), and they become a significant threat.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Chimera Entertainment/H2 Interactive
But wait. The enemy have anti-infantry and area attackers. I should switch the hearthguards for cavalry, and space them out. But my other hero will lose movement if I saddle her with the infantry, the city’s another turn away, and if I hit him now his backup will hit back, and I could lose that artifact….
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Chimera Entertainment/H2 Interactive
Songs of Silence is almost fascinating. Tampering with an established design framework so much was a gamble that definitely worked, creating a pacier, less exhausting model of its own, and integrating auto battles solves some fatigue and repetition problems manystrategy gameswith tactical combat fall into. But its excellent art and one interesting faction highlight its remaining quality of life limitations, bland story, and two relatively pedestrian rivals. This design has legs, there’s some strategy fun to be had here, and I hope a sequel or major expansion is within the studio’s reach. But I certainly don’t hope it’s on the cards.
