strings: a (bug)folk song

I was halfway into Strings when I realized that there was a certain repetitiveness to its puzzle structure. In this substantially cozier spin-off from last Ectocomp’s bug-horror Warden, you play an insectoid musician bent on forming a band by convincing four legendary musicians to play with you. Each is conveniently located in one of the four cardinal compass directions, which admittedly is a common coincidence in parser games, but more to the point, convincing them plays out in a predictable sequence: after getting the lay of the land, there’s a traversal puzzle before you can press your case with one of the musicians, then after a bit of dialogue you solve another puzzle that leads to playing a tune for them that’s so great that it makes them want to jam with you.

This observation wasn’t meant as a gotcha by any means – I actually like it when a game creates a structure that helps the player understand what’s expected of them, and just as I noted the common threads between the first two vignettes, I hit a third that hewed to broadly the same pattern, but changed things up by making the traversal puzzle a much more involved process, with higher stakes than just getting to the relevant bug (I’m talking about the (Spoiler - click to show)underground tunnel echolocation bit, to be clear), showing that the game leaves more than enough room for variation to keep things fresh. But beyond that, as I got through the last of the four sequences and headed into the endgame, I realized that despite my oh-so-clever pattern-spotting I’d heretofore failed to understand the true reason for this structure: it’s right there in the title, this is a folk tale rendered in song, so what’s more natural than verse chorus verse chorus etc.?

Indeed, everything in Strings revolves around its musical theme – well, everything besides its adorable entomological trappings. The game’s paratext establishes it as a legend and thus it takes more liberties than did Warden’s comparatively-grounded setting, so while the protagonist, a cricket-like mandolin player, is familiar from the former game, this time out there’s a wider menagerie of allies and threats, from an irritating sparrow to a winning worm to sapient insects of all descriptions (as well as a parasitic mite that evokes some of the creepier bits of Warden…) The lush prose conjures a magical world that’s familiar in its broad contours, but transformed by its zoomed-in perspective:

"South of the stage the soil becomes spongy, the grasses and herbs become reeds and tangled jewelweed. A vast pond stretches to the south, surface still and glinting in the sun, bordered just offshore by towering reeds. It would be peaceful if it weren’t so loud with frogsong; the frogs themselves are hiding at the base of the reeds or in the water, invisible."

It’s a lovely place to spend time, but your musical quest is an urgent one, as you’re bent on performing a triumphant concert for the love of your life, which just happens to be the moon. And performance isn’t just your goal, it’s also your major puzzle-solving tool: there are plenty of obstacles in your way, from hostile wildlife to inaccessible pathways, and almost all of them save a few optional tasks are resolved via your bugdolin. It’s an impressively versatile instrument, capable of being tuned into high or low pitches, and you’re able to find new strings that can totally transform the sound it generates; then, once you’re ready to play, beyond playing a song you can pluck a single note or strum a chord, or even pitch a performance to an audience of one in order to sway them in a particular direction.

My one small knock against Strings is that there isn’t always a lot of in-game prompting for all of these verbs; you really need to type HELP and COMMANDS at the beginning to make sure you know what you can do. But once you’ve internalized the vocabulary, the puzzles are well constructed to make use of your capabilities – I was never at a loss for what to do, and even my further-out ideas were often rewarded by unlocking an optional achievement (in fact the game boasts quite a lot of pleasing bells and whistles along these lines, including a nicely-drawn map that situates all your peregrinations in space). Combined with the clear, clean structure, it all makes for a nicely-paced sense of progression, as solving puzzles feels satisfying without ever being too hard, and each step tangibly moves you closer to your goal.

And that goal, when it arrives, is a magical-realist set-piece that effectively crowns everything that’s come before, boasting an emotionally-resonant choice as well as more lovely bug-puns (“probos-kiss” is some all-time great wordplay). For all that Strings is a companion piece to Warden, it’s got a vibe all its own, with writing and puzzle design that precisely advance its design goals (and while there are bugs all over this thing, none of them are of the software-error variety). It all makes for a winning package; if it were a folk song, it’d be the kind you catch yourself humming for days after you first hear it.

This is the second game in the (bug)folk series, although it is absolutely not necessary to have played the other one (they have common themes but different characters and continuity).

This is an ancient mythological story in the bug world about a musician bug with the prowess to play so beautifully that they can affect the world around them (it reminded me of the Anansi stories, or Navajo stories, or the Panchatantra).

Gameplay is ritualistic; it reminds me of the first Twine game I enjoyed, You Are Standing at a Crossroads, where you start in the center of a cross-shaped map and have to fulfill a quest in each of the four directions.

In this case, you have to string your bugdolin with various strings in order to convince 4 great musicians to follow you. As well, you have to solve a variety of puzzles. These vary from 'learning a system' to 'leap of intuition' but are mild enough to be solvable by most players (especially if using the hints).

Overall, a satisfying experience, good marriage of story and gameplay.

Good puzzles, fun NPCs. I particularly liked the interaction with (Spoiler - click to show)the moon at the end of the game.

It can be a little hard to notice items to pick up in the room descriptions (but I guess that's intentional on the author's part).