The Lion’s Song (PC)
When the spark of inspiration strikes, it can be difficult to answer the call. It’s not only a matter of confidence as effort and circumstance both determine whether or not a dream can be made manifest. That urge to chase such a powerful desire is practically a universal feeling, and while it’s most often discussed in the context of creative types pursuing their art form of choice, it can be found in all sorts of pursuits. The Lion’s Song is a game about the moment this spark strikes a variety of people, but this is not some run of the mill tale about following your dreams. The Lion’s Song has the player guiding these characters as they do what they can to act on the spark of inspiration, and while many games have failure states where a character can die, the consequence of choosing the wrong path here is to have a character’s soul crushed by a dream they could not follow through on.
Set in Vienna, Austria shortly before the outbreak of World War I, The Lion’s Song is a four episode game that sits somewhere between a point and click adventure and a visual novel. With each of the four episodes you’ll be in control of someone living a completely different life than the other protagonists, be it Wilma the up and coming pianist, Franz the tormented artist, Emma the mathematician battling against prejudice, or the final episode’s assortment of characters who are all introduced slowly across the other stories and tie back to the first three episode’s central characters. In fact, this final chapter takes the idea of being inspired to act the furthest away from the idea this would only be about chasing creative dreams as the men are called to act in an unexpected way. No matter which story you’re involved in, the player’s purpose is to to make the right choices, be they performing the proper actions or making the right dialogue choices, to help these people achieve their goals. However, achieving their dream isn’t the only thing of importance in their life. You might have to make decisions on romance, decide how much you value the importance of a family relationship, and even consider how your actions could influence Vienna as a whole or the other protagonists whose stories intersect with each other in varying ways.
Artistically, The Lion’s Song is distinct yet beautiful. The sepia tone easily places the player’s mind in the past, and while the lack of color might mean the gorgeously drawn environments can’t shine as brightly as they might otherwise, the detail in the pixel art is superb and seems to take no shortcuts in drawing the characters and world. There is definitely a specific style to how the facial features are drawn that likely helps it fit in with a art direction where only certain color shades are available, and the attention paid to bringing every scene to life with the vivid detail definitely helps the game feel alive despite the simple features. In fact, the pixel art moves with remarkable smoothness and does so often, and with memorable music drawing out the emotions of key moments, The Lion’s Song appropriately feels like someone’s inspiration given form.
The choice of Vienna isn’t just an incidental detail. While I’m not well versed on the exact shape of turn of the century Austria, the city’s layout features in multiple characters’ travels during the plot and the original characters invented for this story will run into characters of historical importance. While Sigmund Freud is definitely the most recognizable, his inclusion as a therapist is actually a key part of Franz’s self-discovery rather than a cheap cameo, and the way other historical figures like the painter Gustav Klimt are included makes it fairly easy for them to pass off as natural parts of this story rather than a mere historical allusion. In my attempts to learn who is real and who is not I was often surprised to see which characters were actually inventions of the game or real people who existed.
Despite the run-ins with people who are famous today, the protagonists of The Lion’s Song are well-rounded and given a good amount of time to make their narratives appropriately personal. The fact you need to guide these characters to their destiny is definitely easier once you know the demons that weigh on their minds and the internal obstacles to their success, and coming to know the character is often key to achieving the best outcome for their story. In fact, many of the stories also ask you to better understand the supporting cast, Franz’s portrait art depending heavily on his personal understanding of the subjects and the final episode being more about motivating a trio of characters as a third party who sadly does get much time to display much about himself in comparison. In an interesting touch, the decisions and narrative paths you take in one episode can impact the next story in a few ways. A man named Leo actually ends up having varying levels of interaction with characters based on how you cultivate those relationships across the episodes, and even the lead characters can have brushes with each other in small but interesting ways. A special option at the main menu will actually detail which choices lead to certain aspects of each episode and even let you catch up with side characters to find out what they did after the specific episode’s narrative ended, although Episode 4 is also built to be a general conclusion to the broader ideas of The Lion’s Song.
Of course, with the fate of these character’s ambitions in the balance, the exact outcome of the entire story can be altered by your successes and failures at achieving the main goal of each character. The dialogue choices are most often the important elements to look for, with it possible to lock yourself out of a certain ending if you don’t treat characters a certain way and some paths through the narrative more difficult than others. Franz is given many choices for who to paint and picking the right one might make completing the work easier or harder as plying them to learn their true personality varies, but the way you manage Emma’s identity as she attempts to slip into the male-dominated world of mathematics in disguise can shape her confidence and ability to hold her own when her ruse is in jeopardy.
Not all the choices have immediately obvious consequences even though many make sense after you see the reaction or realize their impact later down the line, but it does seem like the game usually has a few options for things to hit correctly before it locks you into a failure. In fact, it’s the moments that seem a little harsher with rigidly denying you a better narrative path that hold The Lion’s Song back from being a deeply satisfying story of creativity and ambition. One notable instance is a point where a character needs to outrun a police officer or his fate is immediately sealed upon capture, this being the only point in the game where something time sensitive occurs and it uses the otherwise relaxed navigation of Vienna’s map in a disorienting new manner. Since the game autosaves at certain points you might have to restart an entire episode if you choose incorrectly and don’t quit out before a save triggers, and while you can blitz your way through the same choices in the approximately two hour long episodes to get back to the point you had an issue, it’s still an unfortunate way to hamper the player’s ability to experiment or learn how the story’s routes can diverge.
Thankfully, a lot of the choices both allow you to pick and act with no time pressure or skill requirement, even the mathematics portion visualized fairly well and with frequent metaphors to simplify the process of understanding theories despite delving into fairly advanced subjects. Besides dialogue choices there are other interesting ways of managing how the characters pursue their inspiration, such as needing to shut out certain distractions and embrace others as Wilma composes her piano piece or choose how to explore the town when controlling Emma. The final episode is the only point things get a little shaky as it features small puzzles where you need to find the right item for an outcome or other ideas leaning closer to gameplay actions rather than a fluidly integrated aspect of the character’s life, but the clever point and click moments definitely shine brighter than the simpler ones and its easy to forget that you’re technically solving a puzzle since all the elements fit well into the narrative structure.
THE VERDICT: Fittingly, a game about chasing the spark of inspiration is an inspired experience. The Lion’s Song stands out with its detailed artistry and strong musical score, the pixel art bringing Vienna to life and the historical fiction elements fitting in almost seamlessly. The main characters are a compelling bunch and the fact you hold the fate of their life’s most important work in your hand lends greater importance to the narrative choices you make that can impact the story’s direction in multiple ways. The final episode isn’t as strong as the start despite serving as a good conclusion to it all and indulges in a few gameplay styles that seem an odd fit for the game, but most of the interactive elements blend in wonderfully with how a character would live their life that it hardly feels like you’re messing with game mechanics for most of this moving adventure.
And so, I give The Lion’s Song for PC…
A GREAT rating. While the direction the final episode takes with its surprising twist to acting on inspiration is certainly an intriguing one, it is also the one point where it feels like The Lion’s Song failed to follow through with its concepts as it tries to slip in more traditional gameplay ideas. It is a landing that isn’t quite stuck but isn’t a failure either, as it does address certain unresolved elements well and fleshes out the first three episodes’ leads before we send them off to whatever destiny you determined through your actions. The autosave is perhaps the only major element that should be adjusted across all four episodes, because while it is likely there to impress upon the player the importance of a choice by denying them the ability to take it back, it does lead to little hiccups like the problem with the police chase. The Lion’s Song is otherwise a wonderful look at how people can chase different meaningful moments in their lives, the stories working as a character piece while still tying well to the overall themes of inspiration and overcoming personal limitations to achieve your dreams. It is extremely fitting that so much attention was put into the secondary aspects like art and music to help this come to life as a game about drive and ambition that isn’t itself an inspired work of art would hardly be the best host for the tale. Even if the fluidly integrated historical fiction doesn’t tickle you personally it’s still a set of wonderfully told interactive stories that get creative with how you interact with them and are realized in a fitting manner where I could only suggest voice acting on top of it to help this already well-realized piece further come to life.
The Lion’s Song is the kind of game I’d love to rate higher, but the uneven final episode sadly means I can’t go that far. It’s certainly not a bad ending, but it might have been better handled as a simplified epilogue so that it can better provide the necessary resolution to the previous episodes and deliver on its intended final message for the fourth episode’s cast as well. Episodes 1 through 3 are still a great example of a vision coming to life in video game form, and appropriately enough it is in a game about people chasing their vision for what their life could be. Chasing perfection is hardly the purpose of art anyway, and much in the way that Wilma, Franz, and Emma express themselves through their chosen craft, Mi’pu’mi Games brings something wonderful to life here with The Lion’s Song.