Project Songbird is the latest from Conner Rush and FYRE Games (We Never Left, The Collussus is Coming, and Summerland), and it’s immediately trying to sell itself as something more personal than your standard psychological horror outing. For the most part, it adheres to that idea.
In this first-person survival horror title, you play as Dakota, a musician stuck in a creative rut after experiencing some kind of massive emotional trauma, which is revealed in the narrative relatively quickly. Dakota retreats to a cabin in the Appalachian woods to try to force the spark back into their work. By day, they explore the surrounding woods and try to record a new album, but at night? Things go bump in the night, and through ominous and mystical red doors, Dakota enters worlds that “can’t stay still”.
Houses and office spaces with features such as endless corridor loops, with each loop becoming increasingly segmented and unsettling (it’s very PT), after which rooms will change locations, so a door to one room will actually open to another. Mines are filled with monsters and other threats; even the woods that have previously felt safe become filled with stalking and mind-bending dangers, all the while Dakota explores the trauma that has led them to this.
Stop me if you’ve heard this story before. Artist. Isolation. Cabin. Psychological unravelling. You can almost map the genre beats before they happen. The difference here is what the game tries to layer on top of that familiarity, even if it doesn’t always stick the landing.
Project Songbird leans into emotional discomfort rather than traditional horror. Instead of relying on constant jump scares or overt threats, it tries to unsettle you with the slow pressure of anxiety and trauma, with creative burnout sitting in the background of everything you do. When it works, it’s effective. When it doesn’t, it can feel like the game is trying a bit too hard to be about something rather than just letting you sit in it naturally.
Before we start the story, the game provides trigger warnings, which are clearly presented. You can explore exactly how the game has these triggers, and it informs you that looking into them will spoil the story. There are streamer considerations for licensed music and a dyslexia-friendly subtitle font, which is genuinely appreciated. Although it immediately clashes with how small and fiddly a lot of the other on-screen text is.
Then there’s the tone-setting intro. You view an apartment as if you were looking through the lens of an old Super 8 film camera; text appears on screen about getting to work, you walk into the bedroom towards a computer, and the game begins. It’s a sequence that looks great on paper. It has an atmosphere. It has intent, and later on in the game, you see more of this viewpoint; other sections of the game separate from Dakota’s story. The sad thing is that it’s immediately interrupted by messages from game director Conner Rush explaining settings, aspect ratio, and a “thank you for playing”. Then you get a full letter expanding on the same idea.
There’s no doubt it’s genuinely sincere. That’s not the issue. But it’s a very strange way to open a game that’s trying to build mood. You’re not eased in; you’re addressed. And not in a subtle, diegetic way either. It pulls you out just as you’re starting to settle. There’s a version of this that works, but here it feels like the game is slightly too aware of itself too early. That said, the meta elements do become more interesting and more integral to the experience later on. At the end of each act, Rush (doing his own voiceover) speaks directly to Dakota. and the game starts to blur the lines between creator, character, and player in a way that’s actually quite unsettling.
Dakota themselves are a compelling enough character; they are nonbinary (I was very happy to see that the game is consistent in the use of they/them pronouns), and they produce music under the alias Neon Songbird. Throughout most of the game, they are strong-willed and passionate; only towards the end do they really unravel. Dakota is a compelling but played-out character. Like the genre and setting, we’re not pushing any boundaries here. What makes Dakota stand out more than anything is the excellent voice acting from Valerie Rose Lohman, who you may recognise as the titular character from What Remains of Edith Finch. Lohman’s voice acting brings Dakota to life in a way that makes you really connect with them and experience their fear alongside yours.
With the gameplay aspects, exploration and puzzles do most of the heavy lifting, and honestly, that’s where the game feels most confident. The puzzles are varied, generally satisfying, and avoid falling into the trap of repeating the same idea over and over. There are moments where it feels a bit hand-held early on, but later sections give you enough friction to actually feel like you’ve earned solutions.
Combat is where things get a bit more uneven. Resources are scarce, which is clearly the intention, and there’s some interesting design work in how you interact with weapons. It makes sense regarding the story. Why would a city-living musician know much about combat? It waves away little questions like “How do they get by in a cabin in the woods for a month?” with some throwaway “I’m glad Dad took us camping” lines.
The problem with the encounters isn’t narrative; the issue lies in the fact that some enemies feel more like obstacles than threats, especially once you figure out how to position yourself around them, which does have the consequence of undercutting the tension and fear that the game is trying so hard to instil. The “Weeping Angel”-style enemies are a good example of this. Initially, they’re tense, even a bit frantic, especially when you’re trying to solve puzzles at the same time. But once you understand the logic, the fear drains out of them pretty quickly, and they turn into something you just manage rather than react to.
I have a love-hate relationship with the concept of “Weeping Angel” enemies; those damned creatures have dogged my nightmares for nearly 20 years since they first appeared in Doctor Who, and having to play against enemies of the same ilk should be terrifying for me – exactly what I want from a horror game – but once I realised that all of this was about timing and positioning, it was just another puzzle, which is, frankly, a little disappointing.
Still, the game isn’t really trying to be a pure combat experience. It’s much more interested in atmosphere, and in that regard, the environments do a lot of the work. There’s a strong contrast between grounded natural spaces and more surreal, dreamlike shifts in layout. The environmental storytelling is doing a lot of quiet lifting in the background, whether it’s intentional notes, visual details, or just the way spaces feel slightly “off” in a way you can’t immediately explain.
Audio is easily one of Project Songbird’s strongest pillars. Everything from footsteps to ambient noise feels deliberately placed, and music is obviously central to the entire experience, given Dakota’s role as a musician. The idea of recording environmental sounds and feeding them into that creative process is one of the more interesting mechanical hooks, even if it’s not always pushed as far as it could be. There are rough edges technically. Some stuttering, some pop-in, the usual indie friction. Nothing catastrophic, but enough to remind you you’re not playing something polished into oblivion.
Project Songbird is at its strongest when it stops trying to announce its themes and just lets you feel them through play. It doesn’t always manage that balance. Sometimes it overexplains itself; sometimes it pulls you out when it should be pulling you deeper in. But when it clicks, it lands perfectly into the uncomfortable mix of reflection and unease. It’s not really trying to be a traditional horror game. It’s closer to something you sit with than something you survive. And depending on your tolerance for that kind of emotional pressure, it’ll either stick with you or slowly wear you down.
