Sonority (Switch) Review
Release Date: December 21, 2022
Publisher/Developer: ASHGAMES
Platform: PC, Switch (reviewed)
Price: $19.99
Sonority is a beautiful tale of friendship between a young girl, Esther, and her animal friend, a talking bear. When the game starts, this bear is ill, and Esther is on a mission to a faraway land, where humans and animals converse regularly, to find a special melody that can heal his sickness. Upon reaching this faraway land, she comes across a talking raccoon who aids her in solving mysterious puzzles and learning new melodies that move puzzle pieces and help her advance toward her goal.
Sonority is played in an isometric angle. As Esther traverses the countryside, she comes across barriers, be they doors that need opened or mysterious paths that need to be made. Glyphs are connected via conduits, and when a musical note is played near one of the glyphs, it will resonate to that tone when the conduits are activated. The resulting musical piece will modify the landscape in unique ways. For example, if you play a C followed by an E, the two steps on the musical chart that the note changes means that the block will move two squares up. Finding the proper symphony causes a path to open up, allowing Esther to make it to the next area. (For gamers who don’t know squat about music, you can change the musical note names to simple numbers 1-8, making it easier to tell the difference between steps.) Hidden tokens can be put into various totems around the world that give more to the story. Each area of Sonority is beautifully rendered and looks like ancient structures long forgotten to time. The story weaved inside shows a forgotten society of peace between animals and humans, with moss-strewn frescoes dotting the landscape and sharing more of the tale.
I grew up with a musical background, so Sonority’s base mechanics fit well for me. I can push the right notes and hear the base notes of a song, then use that and what happens to the environment to construct the best idea of what the tune should be. My frustration with this mechanic may go away with time, simply that you kind of have to start with an educated guess if they are particularly complicated. I had one puzzle I guessed the right answer to pushing random notes, and others that simply didn’t make sense until I brute-forced it several times. It’s a back-and-forth learning curve that can be both fun and frustrating. Buttons make sense in the “musical instrument” sense, with the eight notes going, low to high, ZL, L, up, left, down, right, R, ZR. I can imagine a special instrument with the buttons/holes positioned as such. A non-musical layperson may have difficulties with this strange wrangle around the controller. Personally, I’d have done four shoulders then combinations of two buttons on the top, but I’m no programmer. It’d be neat to be able to fully customize them and make it your own, but a bit of practice and it comes naturally.
Some of the puzzles have special tweaks to make you think, such as a particular note locked in place, or two linked glyphs that have to have the same note. Still other puzzles have multiple “activation nodes” that will take different conduits through the same nodes, and all notes have to work together to open the path. These take a few extra steps, and it can be frustrating to figure out one side/half/portion only to find the locked/joined section ruins the whole thing.
Sonority gets players to find the harmony of music to properly solve puzzles, and that in itself is beautiful. Sometimes you have to take crazy guesses, sometimes a bit of brute force, but when you finally figure out the rhythm and open the door, the beautiful music you create is very rewarding. I even found a whole section that didn’t seem to have a “point”, fully allowing me to move glyphs and freestyle. This is a wonderful combination of music and puzzles whose lore draws you in and keeps you engaged through to the end.
Pros:
-Beautiful art style
-Fresh take on the puzzle genre
-Fully built world
Cons:
-May be difficult for people who aren’t musically inclined
-Esther moves pretty slow
Special thanks to ASHGAMES for providing a code for review!