Song in the Smoke

The initial impressions of the game are very favorable. The crafting is satisfying and discovering new crafting recipes while exploring is great. You search for the required three items while trying to gear up and getting pumped to face your strongest foe yet. Then the game keeps repeating the same thing. Location after location you're doing the same thing. Create camp, hunt local wildlife and gather local resources to upgrade yourself to next tier. Move to next area and repeat. Creating a storage sack is often very important but each storage is it's own thing. You're always starting with stuff on your back when moving between areas and all your previous work becomes moot. Having a Resident Evil style universal storage sack would be incredibly welcome and cut back on the repetitive tedium of the game. The last areas are very disappointing. Boss of the second to last area is nothing but a walking target, offering no resistance. Last area is very arduous and frustrating. You need to feed yourself, keep warm and for some reason keep away the dark. Hunger is great and easy to handle. Staying warm doesn't seem to come into play until closer to the end of the game which feels like a missed opportunity. Cold snaps could have been a great thing. Keeping away the dark... it's not about the darkness. A magical floating goat that people usually call Wendigo will haunt you at night. It causes massive damage, clips through walls and can't be fought off without light. Game wants you to explore at night for upgrades but the Wendigo actively encourages you to hug your bonfire at night. I would recommend not building a bonfire at all but to simply have a torch in your inventory at all times. When the menace wakes you up at night, simply smack your torch against the wall to light it and it will go away. You have to do this twice a night to keep him away but you will save a lot of time fetching firewood each day. Repetitive and stretched out nature of the gameplay combined with the awful Wendigo mechanic is the reason why I'm giving this negative review.

While it isn't without its flaws, Song in the Smoke is criminally under reported and underappreciated. At the time of writing, there are only 23 other Steam reviews. Oomph. The development team deserves better. This game is a well produced, functioning full length product with plenty of features. For these reasons along, it is a positive rating and well worth trying. Everything that follows may sounds negative, but Song in the Smoke is still an enjoyable VR experience of which there are far too few. Fighting the animals is a ton of fun. Being chased by the dinosaur sized animals is a ton of fun. Taking in the large forests in the twilight light, firefiles scattering through the air, is a ton of fun. If you liked the art of S&S, you should be at home here. It runs fantastic on a 4790k and 2080 Super. It has some of the largest environments that I've encountered in a VR game. Boneworks had giant street and building interiors, but they were mostly empty rectangular spaces. Subnautica has large waterways but, when I tried it, they were plagued with assets popping in once close enough to the player. Here, there are giant forest areas with many nooks and crannies to explore. The colors are vibrant and lush. Ok, it isn't super detailed, but I assume, like S&S, the developers were balancing style with VR performance. Both S&S and Song in the Smoke are masterclasses in the ethos of doing more with less. It felt like a mix of Turok and open world Zelda. There are lite, lite story elements. Personally a weak point. Dropped immediately into a caveman doing his thing. Your mission is collecting hidden orbs per zone and then fighting progressively harder animals. After you collect orbs, you're treated to a brief cinematic. There are also hidden power ups. The biggest flaw is its clunkiness, which is likely the result of being ported from the PSVR. Inventory management is more smooth and intuitive in PCVR first games like HL:A or Walking Dead: S&S. For example, there are two quick slots for inventory, but they're seemingly bound to specifically the left or right hand versus shoulder location. While you'll access them by reaching over your shoulder, if you reach your right hand over your left shoulder, you'll pull out the right hand item. It can be confusing until you realize what is happening. There are other nagging object and inventory interactions. New instructions are floating tool tips that can be easily missed, such as if you are in active pursuit of an animal. Between tracking down the orbs, you'll have to survive. Frankly, I liked S&S's or the Forest's survival balance better. There is no stamina meter. Instead, you'll progressively become hungrier and sleepier. The survival elements were on the tip of being overbearing. For example, you basically need to eat a couple pieces of meat or fruit each day. However, most of the animals only drop one piece of meat per kill, and the act of harvesting the single meat usually takes half the day cycle (it fast forwards). Unlike S&S or the Forest, where I could stockpile plenty of food materials during the day and then prepare meals to last several days, I basically just kept my head above water each day. It ended up being faster to skip harvesting meat and grab berries or mushrooms on the fly. Physically crafting each item, like knives, arrows and campfires, is really neat. Still, like the one to one meat experience noted above, crafting is one to one also. While quick, you will be hand crafting each and every arrow you use (unless you take time to find the hidden caches). After building your 10th campfire (which has to be rebuilt at least once or twice in the night), the experience starts to drift from game to chore. Plus, items tend to wear out really fast. The starting bow broke on the second or third hunting trip. Each item has an independent quality level, but you would be forgiven for overlooking that detail while scavenging. There is simply a lot of upkeep.

Quality product. Gets a bit samey towards the end. Took me 12 hrs to finish.

Ran about naked, sharpened a stick, beat an animal to death, skinned it. no longer naked. Ate a mushroom. I just wish that weird bird would stop mocking me and that i could kill a fish with a rock. Living my best life. Kind regards Me Yes Buy It

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g629s_hiyAg Song in the Smoke is one of the best VR games I've played yet, but it comes with a frustrating and punishing difficulty curve.

Очень качественно и интересно. Настоящий выживач. Да, построек раз-два и обчелся. Но момент разведения костра, процесс охоты сделаны отлично. Мороз, страх темноты, голод, болезни, раны - за всем приходится следить. Ну и сама история - лаконично но очень пронзительно. Супер!

Un des meilleur jeu craft / survie en VR. l'histoire et le gameplay est excellent. La quantité de craft différent est énorme. A part quelques achievement bloqué, je n'ai rencontré aucun bug

Хороший выживач за бомжа из каменного века, напоминающий по атмосфере Zeno Clash.

Nice, somewhat soothing, survival game

I didn't like in the beginning the way bow and club activation works (pressing left or right triggers, instead of grabbing the bow from behind the shoulder etc) and teleporting instead of jumping. But I got used to it the longer I played, so it wasn't a problem. Overall I really enjoyed the whole playthrough (I played the hardest difficulty). Some mechanics are not explained in written form, so you have to be aware of visual hints, which I liked, though I didn't pay enough attention sometimes and learned about stuff from videos. The overall feeling of loneliness and adverse world was fantastic. Gameplay loop of traveling into new territory and finding optimal camp sites and exploring the land for hunting places and materials was very satisfying. Especially the feeling of visually remembering and getting to know the place and creating your own paths etc, stuff that I am longing for in todays gaming industry where you are guided by gps from point to point and dont really see the world. The progression felt meaningful, because it wasn't just the stats of equipment. I was forced to try different approaches to my daily survival and learn, which led to becoming better at hunting, traversing the land, foraging etc. Fun game!