There is ongoing debate regarding whether video games can be classified as works of art. Interactive storytelling has a clear advantage over simply watching, listening, or reading something. There’s nothing like getting your hands dirty and experiencing it at such an intimate level.Stray Gods: A Roleplaying Musicalgoes above and beyond to deliver an experience unlike many others.
RELATED:Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical - All Characters And Their Voice Actors
Summerfall Studios, the studio behind this, has created something that transcends gaming, art, and musical theater in one fell swoop. The music and story have so many twists and turns that you have a high chance of not hearing the same song twice in the same scenes. Each song is a must-play, but these are the stand-out stars.
Major Spoilers Below
9I Can Teach You - Pan, Grace, And Freddie
The goat Idol who prefersthe antagonistic way of doing thingsdecides to pop into your place soon after you received your new powers. He wants to get a feel for you, to see if and how he can use you in a game that he only knows. Grace brings out of him a mysterious jazz number that, depending on which choices you make, will have a different ‘main’ instrument sound throughout.
The cunning blue choice, for example, plays with the clarinet to give the song creates a sneaky vibe when you hear it. Red, representing the badass, rebellious choices in the game, will lead with a heavier guitar. The storytelling being intertwined down to the instrument choices is a genius narrative move. Pan’s attempt to draw this magic out is your first opportunity to hear the minute differences that make a huge impact in how you listen to each song.
8Adrift - Grace
Have you ever gotten the feeling that you’re just going through the motions in life? Like you don’t have a direction, or even an inclination to get a direction and you’re just letting life drag you where ever it deems you’re to go?
Adrift captures that feeling and pairs it along with a sad, but hopeful melody that gradually becomes the theme of the overall game. It gives hope to the hopeless, but it doesn’t go fully after-school special with its message, either. The song sounds like a good friend who puts their hand on your shoulder and tells you you’re going to be okay.
7Cast A Spell - Asterion, Hecate, Grace, And Freddie
If there were ever representation for the awkwardly-in-love shy folks out there, Asterion would be it. He’s in love and wants to confess his feelings, but his nerves are choking the words right out of his vocabulary. Grace offers to use her powers to pull those words up from the depths and into Hecate’s heart.
RELATED:Romance Games WIth The Best Storylines
Grace’s newfound powers probably haven’t worked this hard until now, because Asterion was struggling so hard that second-hand embarrassment proved to be a fearsome foe for the newly minted Muse. Still, the melody is simple and cute, matching the overall tone of the scene.
6Challenging A Queen - Persephone And Grace
Meeting Persephoneat her clubis either a brave move for a new Muse or a stupid one. Persephone isn’t in the mood to talk or negotiate any information for someone who supposedly killed the former Muse Calliope, but that doesn’t mean she is just going to let you leave unscathed either.
The mood of this song remains tense, and you’ll have to navigate through Persephone’s rage-filled lyrics to get through to the core of the issue, and you never know if you’ve said the wrong thing until it’s too late. Tread carefully, fledgling Muse. You’re treading on already thin ice.
5Phantom Pains - Apollo And Grace
In Stray Gods, the Idols (gods) in this world are a far cry from what you’d expect. Apollo, for example, is a complex god known for both being the God of Music and healing, to being infamous as a God of Destruction and vengeance in kind. The Apollo of this story throws both of these archetypes away, and instead sits with theguilt and emptiness eternity has grown inside his heart.
Phantom Pains is about the loss of Calliope sure, but it reaches so much deeper than that. The loss and regret he’s grown throughout his lifetimes sit heavy inside his heart and only show themselves through this disconsolate duet.
4Look Into Me - Medusa
At first, the song’s combative nature and Medusa’s intoxicating vocals would have you think that the song was simply about Medusa capturing a premium meal and relishing in it, but those lyrics are saying much more than that. There is a back and forth, an ongoing struggle between the hunger and guilt she feels at the same time.
RELATED:Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical - Grace’s Natures, Explained
The hunger is something that causes her great guilt after she’s done consuming her victims. Medusa doesn’t want to be this way, and she misses the way she was before Athena took her vengeance out on her andturned her into the unwilling villain she is now. It’s a song that will make you cry while you’re dancing away.
3The Ritual - Aphrodite, Grace, Eros, And Apollo
If you were able to escape the pain completely, albeit temporarily, would you? That’s the moral quandary this song presents to Grace and you, the player.Aphrodite has a deep depression that has plagued her for eons, and she feels that the only way to stop herself from feeling it is to essentially reset her life by ending the current one.
Grace is stuck in the middle of two difficult but understandable positions, and each decision you make comes with a different version of the song that will either be compassionate toward Aphrodite or almost hostile in trying to bring her from the brink of cyclical despair. Neither choice feels truly right or wrong here.
2The Throne - Persephone, Grace, And Orpheus
The Bard and The Muse. Both are capable of creating and controlling the music around them, and both are coming to a head inside the underworld. Grace, a newly minted Idol and the Last Muse, and Orpheus, the bard who risked it all for his love’s spirit only to throw it away at the end, lives on with contempt in his heart. Then you have Persephone, Goddess of the Underworld and fellow victim of Hades.
‘The Throne’ is a power struggle between two people who were hurt by the same person, and Grace being there helps conduct the conversation further and allows hatchets to be buried and scores to become settled. You realize this song is different when your opponent can take the power of song over from you. So much fun.
1The Chorus Is In Accord - Athena, Persephone, Aphrodite, Grace, And Apollo
The second you’ve gained Calliope’s eidolon, you are summoned to the Chorus, made up of the strongest Idols and led by Athena, goddess of wisdom. She welcomes you with a warm smile and plenty of answers to your questions. The others are less welcoming, but okay. After you get everything laid out for you on the table, Athen and crew drop the hammer: you have to die.
The scene gives you emotional whiplash, but you don’t have time to react as the quartet of gods begins to sing their imposing song of murder at you, letting you know that your time as a Muse is up before it began. The song does a great job of making you feel as though you don’t have any control over your powers and it is being given to your captors instead.
