{"id":12509,"date":"2023-12-05T13:37:50","date_gmt":"2023-12-05T12:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/05\/a-highland-song-review-a-moving-magical-realist-journey-through-scottish-scenery-and-mythology\/"},"modified":"2023-12-05T13:37:50","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T12:37:50","slug":"a-highland-song-review-a-moving-magical-realist-journey-through-scottish-scenery-and-mythology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2023\/12\/05\/a-highland-song-review-a-moving-magical-realist-journey-through-scottish-scenery-and-mythology\/","title":{"rendered":"A Highland Song review \u2013 a moving, magical-realist journey through Scottish scenery and mythology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nintendo Switch, PC; inkle<\/strong>
This trek across forbidding crags and through crumbling caves demands resilience and determination, but rewards it with a wonderfully rich and atmospheric sense of place<\/p>\n

A Highland Song is a magical-realist trek through the Scottish Highlands, and at first I didn\u2019t think I liked it at all. My first attempt at getting teenage runaway Moira through the austere, perilous mountains to her Uncle Hamish\u2019s lighthouse ended with me restarting the game out of frustration, having been stranded, lost and shivering, on the same unforgiving mountain range for so long that my patience was frayed thin. I was battered by relentless wind and rain, kept getting stuck in caves, and dutifully picked up sprigs of lavender and white gorse while never seeming to find anything helpful, like a bothy or a Twix. Moira kept taking tumbles down the scree because I misread the scenery, robbing her of what little energy she had left. It was brutal, and not at all enjoyable.<\/p>\n

But the second time, I tried a different path not long after leaving Moira\u2019s home, through a tunnel under a dam, and made it just a couple of days late to the lighthouse. The third time, I was there in time for Beltane (the Gaelic May Day festival), to see the game\u2019s ending. The fourth time, and the fifth, I had days to spare, and spent them exploring the crags, probing caves, meeting strange travellers and climbing peaks I hadn\u2019t yet conquered. I found hand-drawn slivers of map tucked into matchboxes, lunchboxes and mouldy discarded sporrans, and scoured the outline of the hills from each peak to discern their meaning. Sometimes I even found shelter when I needed it, though I also once fell through a bothy floor into yet another cave.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nNintendo Switch, PC; inkleThis trek across forbidding crags and through crumbling caves demands resilience and determination, but rewards it with a wonderfully rich and atmospheric sense of place
\nA Highland Song is a magical-realist trek through the Scottish Highlands, and at first I didn\u2019t think I liked it at all. My first attempt at getting teenage runaway Moira through the austere, perilous mountains to her Uncle Hamish\u2019s lighthouse ended with me restarting the game out of frustration, having been stranded, lost and shivering, on the same unforgiving mountain range for so long that my patience was frayed thin. I was battered by relentless wind and rain, kept getting stuck in caves, and dutifully picked up sprigs of lavender and white gorse while never seeming to find anything helpful, like a bothy or a Twix. Moira kept taking tumbles down the scree because I misread the scenery, robbing her of what little energy she had left. It was brutal, and not at all enjoyable.
\nBut the second time, I tried a different path not long after leaving Moira\u2019s home, through a tunnel under a dam, and made it just a couple of days late to the lighthouse. The third time, I was there in time for Beltane (the Gaelic May Day festival), to see the game\u2019s ending. The fourth time, and the fifth, I had days to spare, and spent them exploring the crags, probing caves, meeting strange travellers and climbing peaks I hadn\u2019t yet conquered. I found hand-drawn slivers of map tucked into matchboxes, lunchboxes and mouldy discarded sporrans, and scoured the outline of the hills from each peak to discern their meaning. Sometimes I even found shelter when I needed it, though I also once fell through a bothy floor into yet another cave. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nintendo Switch, PC; inkleThis trek across forbidding crags and through crumbling caves demands resilience and determination, but rewards it with a wonderfully rich and atmospheric sense of place A Highland Song is a magical-realist trek through the Scottish Highlands, and at first I didn\u2019t think I liked it at all. My first attempt at getting …<\/p>\n

A Highland Song review \u2013 a moving, magical-realist journey through Scottish scenery and mythology<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12509"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}