Everything We Know About Ghost Song

Video games are the best medium on Earth, but there is a hard reality to them: They are hard. Video games aren’t all that old, but in the short lifespan of games, we have an expansive library stretching into the hundreds of thousands. However, tons of others remain lost to the closets and storage bins, stored on hard drives, collecting dust and slowly decaying. Without a publisher or marketing team, some games never release. For these reasons, the development of Ghost Song and its upcoming release represent a success story of hard work and dedication.

It takes a special kind of drive to see a dream realized. And for Matt White and developer Old Moon, they will soon see their fantasy become a reality. With its release approaching soon, here is everything we know about the metroidvania Ghost Song.

Humble beginnings: A ghost in the wind

The year is 2013. It is the sixth generation of games, with the seventh approaching imminently. There are more games in development than ever, and the tools to make them are quickly improving. Most importantly, these tools are getting into the hands of anyone and everyone who wishes to make a game. At the time, Unity was making a splash, and for developer Matt White, he took his love of games, especially Metroid, and set out to make his love letter to the game and genre in Ghost Song.

The Kickstarter page reveals that the game originally began as an incredibly small web-based flash game. With any creative endeavor, especially one in video games, what starts out small becomes big: new levels, enemies, bosses, story elements, new weapons, the works. The Kickstarter helped fund these ambitions, and on September 13, 2022, the game raised $53,000 with over 3000 backers.

Progress was slow and steady for White and his small team. The team added more over the years. Eventually, beta testing and demos became available to help flesh out the game’s potential. By 2019, Ghost Song was 90% complete. By March of this year, Matt and the team secured a publisher for Ghost Song when Humble Games came on board.

Singing a symphonic narrative

Ghost Song is a metroidvana with an abundance of lore and story. On the desolate moon of Lorian, far and away from known space, a Deadsuit awakens. The Deadsuit is an advanced cybernetic being with weapons, utilities, and a sharp degree of intellect. However, the Deadsuit wakes up with no memories, not even program parameters. Lorian has had a a strange and disturbing history, rife with a horrifying mystery that those smart enough dare not unveil. For the Deadsuit, the only way to find out of themselves is to face the danger head-on, exploring the moon and finding out what happened.

Ghost Song has themes of redemption and freedom, but this isn’t the classic tale of resistance against an oppressor. The title Ghost Song comes from a strange phenomena that players encounter. On Lorian, there are ethereal lifeforms that drift about, and appear as ghosts. Their existence intertwines to their physical body, located somewhere on the Moon, more than likely twisted and malformed. By destroying these husks can a ghost truly be freed.

Tough but fair

White describes Ghost Song as a tough but fair game, with areas that may be a little harder than the rest but the entire purpose of the gameplay experience is intrigue. Additionally, it will go harder on the more emotional aspects of the genre, specially isolation and purpose in the depths of the universe.

As evidenced by the release date announcement trailer, fans of the metroidvania genre should expect a plethora of the familiar markings. The game offers everything from exploitation and challenging combat, to locating tool and resources to increase the odds of survival. All the while, players become engrossed in a world that ponders the aspects of life and death at the edges of space.

A brave new world

Most metroivanias dealt with the familiar of saving the world, stopping space pirates, or moving through a castle filled with zombies, vampires and werewolves. Here, Ghost Song takes place in the unknown wrapped in a planet that calls to question ideas like morality, life, death, and the afterlife. Just what is causing this is an unknown but intriguing to find out.

Even the Deadsuit is a mysterious character. Is it a robot built on directives or something more? What are the memories the Deadsuit can’t remember? Maybe the Deadsuit isn’t a former human at all and is a machine that has developed something of a consciousness. Ultimately, what is the purpose and role for the Deadsuit on Lorian? That answer lies in playing Ghost Song and discovering it ourselves.

Ghost Song launches next week

Video games are hard, and even though Ghost Song was fully funded, the gaming climate, coupled with a variety of real-world happenings, can hinder the development and progress of a game. By comparison, Iconoclasts took more than seven years to developed, and the acclaimed Axiom Verge was made by a single person, and his dog, in five years. To get this far is a triumph and one worthy of respect.

Ghost Song already has me engaged with its mysterious sci-fi story. On a personal note, I love pretty much anything with robots, cyborgs, synths, androids, A.I, and space. If a game has something along the lines of Ghost In The Shell and humans uploading their consciousness to robot bodies, it already has my attention. In a way, Ghost Song can be compared toto Creature In the Well in that a long mechanical being is mysteriously reawakened to take on a great challenge. In a year where many games are being pushed back to 2023, it’s shaping to be a great way to bookend 2022 in games.

Ghost Song launches for PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC on Nov. 3, 2022, with a Day One launch for Gamepass. Ghost Song can be wishlisted here on Steam.