After a successful Kickstarter all the way back in 2013, Matt White's Ghost Song was officially released on November 3, 2022. The game's journey from its initial funding, receiving over 50 thousand dollars, to its official release with publisher Humble Games has been a long one. Solo game projects of this scale have been notorious for taking such an immense amount of time to complete, but as is often the case, the experience that results is wonderful. With 2022 being a year without an official Metroid release from Nintendo, Ghost Song brings Metroid fans a dark and existential take on the genre with a vast array of combat options for players to explore.
The story of Ghost Song begins on the alien moon of Lorian. The player awakes as a Deadsuit, a mysterious humanoid war machine that has been lying dormant on the moon for some time. While the player's Deadsuit is armed and prepared to fight, something is amiss on the planet. When the player discovers a group of humans who crashed on the moon and cannot find a way to escape, their journey to uncover the secrets of the world and finding the humans an escape begin to intertwine. What starts out as a simple journey, though, slowly grows more and more uncertain. As the mysteries of the world reveal themselves, it turns out the humans may have more of a connection to this world than expected.
Ghost Song Makes Excellent Use of Its Metroid Influences
What Ghost Song captures so brilliantly is the feeling of being trapped. The tight corridors and surreal flora and fauna that seem to operate by a different set of rules than you, create a tension fundamental to the Metroid experience. Much like what the Alien franchise does in film, Metroid-style games place the player in an uncertain world that cannot be pieced together simply. The environment and mood of world must be deeply evocative and raise just as many questions as they answer. Ghost Song accomplishes all of this brilliantly.
In particular, the use of body horror in Ghost Song is absolutely excellent. Piles of corpses can be found festering in the backdrop as you attempt to loot resources and answers from the unlucky ones stranded here long before your journey. The grimness of the bramble paths and deep purple earth littered with tall, lumbering creatures give Lorian an almost gothic quality. The stellar art direction and environment design both amplify the tension and mystery of exploring to discover what exactly the Deadsuit are and what forces are in control of Lorian.
Ghost Song has also clearly taken lessons from Team Cherry's beloved indie classic Hollow Knight, whose dark atmosphere and challenging boss fights have been enduringly popular. While Ghost Song is very narrative-drive, its partially voiced dialogue with its various characters bring a great deal of depth to its world and characters, the game's boss fights and varied combat customizability ensure players of all stripes will find something to enjoy.
Ghost Song's Music Brings Its Alien Atmosphere To Life
The game's soundtrack, produced, written, and mastered by Scottish composer Grant Graham, is brilliant mix of spacey echoing guitar riffs and ambient synthesizers. The intimacy of the guitar-based songs help ground the game in a sense of reality, important in a sci-fi world so different from Earth. In the quiet moments of dialogue and exploration, it creates a real sense of humanity for the characters that reinforces the player's goal to help them.
The echoing quality to the guitar gives it a distance and obfuscation, as if it is capturing only a memory of home, a longing nostalgia. The music excellently weaves together the disparate realms of the humans desperate to return home, and the harsh coldness of the world they've found themselves in.
It may be some time before another Matt White project enters the world given the time it took for Ghost Song to release, but labors of love rarely do come often. Matt White has stepped in and filled the Metroid-shaped gap in Nintendo's release schedule this year, as Ghost Song is an excellent Metroidvania that anyone who loved last year's Metroid Dread should play.
Ghost Song is available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox Series X.