Song of Horror Complete Edition

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A fixed-camera hunt by an entity you cannot fight, where every death is final.

Platforms: PC, PlayStation, Xbox
Price: Paid
Rated: Mostly Positive on Steam (78% of 3,095 reviews)
Players: 1
Controls: Keyboard and mouse or a controller.
Made by: Protocol Games
Released: 2019

Get it on Steam PlayStation Store (PS4)Xbox

What frightens An entity called the Presence, which you can never fight, reacts to how you play: it seeps through doors you must hold shut, forces you to hide and steady your breathing, and when it reaches a character that person is dead for good and someone else must take up the search.
Content: jumpscares, death of playable characters.

Song of Horror is a third-person, fixed-camera survival horror game in five episodes. You search for a missing writer and his family with a cast of characters, any of whom can die for good, while an entity called the Presence hunts you through haunted places.

About Song of Horror Complete Edition

Song of Horror was made by Protocol Games, a studio in Madrid, and released episode by episode on PC from October 2019. The Complete Edition gathers all five episodes, and came to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in May 2021.

The famous writer Sebastian P. Husher has vanished with his whole family, and the assistant his editor sent to his house never came back. You follow the trail with a set of characters tied to the story, each with their own view of it, through Husher's mansion and on to places such as an antique shop, a forgotten abbey and an abandoned mental hospital. A cursed music box sits at the heart of it.

It plays like the fixed-camera survival horror of the 1990s: you explore, collect items, read notes and solve puzzles. The difference is the Presence, an entity driven by an AI that adapts to what you do rather than following a script. It may push against a door you must hold shut, or come close enough that you must hide and slow your breathing. If it gets a character, that character is gone for good, and you go on with another.

The fear is the waiting: you never know when the Presence will come, and losing a character you have spent hours with weighs on every choice. It suits players who like slow, puzzle-led horror in the line of Alone in the Dark and the old Resident Evil, and who can bear permanent losses.

How to play Song of Horror Complete Edition

Buy the Complete Edition on Steam, PlayStation or Xbox and start the first episode.
Choose a character for the episode; each reacts differently to clues and objects.
Explore the location under fixed camera angles, collecting items and reading notes.
Solve the puzzles that open the way forward.
When the Presence comes, react: hold the door, hide, or calm your breathing until it passes.
If a character dies, pick another and carry on; the dead stay dead.