A Highland Song Review

Inkle are hands down one of the most interesting developers in terms of their treatment of narrative. From their most famous title, 80 Days, to my personal favourite, Heaven’s Vault, they have a knack for telling incredible stories in innovative ways. It’s no surprise, then, to hear that I was hugely excited to get my hands on their newest title. A Highland Song is a departure for Inkle in terms of genre and style but very much continues their impressive track record.

Rather than traversing the globe (or space), A Highland Song is a much more personal and localised story. It does, however, share the feeling of escape and personal growth that seems so characteristic of their oeuvre. The studio description for the game begins with the simple phrase ‘Moira McKinnon is running away’, and this is exactly how the game starts too. Moira is a young girl in the Scottish Highlands who wants to escape from home to visit her Uncle. There is no backstory, no history of trauma, no real motivation provided aside from a young girl’s desire to explore. This immediately puts you in Moira’s shoes and the sheer joy of traversing the Highlands is infectious – as well as the sense of desperation when you find yourself lost.

Aesthetically, A Highland Song is an absolute treat with beautiful cartoony visuals and atmospheric sound design. The Scottish Highlands is presented as a series of layers which Moira can move between when pathways are discovered. There is an incredible sense of depth and scale thanks to this approach which really contributes to the joy of exploration and discovery. The atmosphere is further deepened through immersive weather effects that can limit your visibility, make climbing more treacherous and even damage your health.

As an extra aspect to this aesthetic appeal, there are frequent joyous chase sequences which play out as rhythm action minigames to the tune of Scottish folk artists TALISK and Fourth Moon. Rather than running from some kind of threat, however, these are presented as Moira chasing deer for the sheer enjoyment of feeling the wind in her hair. Successfully completing these improves your stamina and enables you to climb higher and further as well as just bring fun to play. I played through on my Steam Deck with headphones and actively looked forward to each folk tune section.

Navigating the Highlands is mechanically enjoyable with a 2D platformer-inspired approach that also shares similarities with the climbing of Breath of the Wild. You have limited stamina at first so must work around larger barriers until you build this up. Once you have completed a number of chases though, you can scramble up imposing parts of the landscape that seemed insurmountable at first. Scaling mountains is the chief way to progress here, as reaching the peak of one allows you to identify paths to new areas. These paths require you to either find documents in the scattered shelters along the way or are unlocked through story progress. Each one has a rough sketch of a peak which you must match up to the one you have scaled and then find the specific point. This fairly simple mechanic is hugely rewarding, not least because of Moira’s infectious enthusiasm when you get it right – wonderfully expressed in Scottish idioms.

The exploration and enthusiasm of Moira is enough to keep you playing through the game’s full runtime – a brisk 3 hours or so if things go well – but the real depth of the game comes from its replayability with 100 paths to find and many different routes to take. There is a relatively tight timeline to reach Uncle Hamish before Beltane too, with my first playthrough missing this deadline by 6 days. Managing your stamina, finding the best route, or just seeing where wandering will take you – further exploration feels like returning to a favourite place and rediscovering it anew.

To top off this personal and beautiful experience of one girl’s journey, your progression is accompanied by a host of traditional Scottish folk tales and myths. Ghosts, selkies, and other mysterious creatures populate the lonely peaks and abandoned cottages and their stories provide a fantastic backdrop to the whole game.