A question I regularly ask myself while reviewing games is, what makes me qualified to review games? Is it because I have been playing games since the early 90s? Is it because I have enough media literacy to understand the themes and motifs in games? Is it because I have been covering games for close to a decade? Whatever the answers to those questions, the answer that I almost always land on is that I have a genuine love for games. I love games, I love talking about games, and to gamers. I love doing this because I want to share my love of games with others, and I want them to kinda sorta love the same games I do.
Project Songbird asks this very same question in a very heightened way. Dakota is a singer-songwriter who has lost her spark. She is making music that no one loves. Not critics, not fans. She has a nagging feeling that she is not really talented, that her successes were simply due to luck, and that people have found out she is not as good as they thought. She is suffering from a case of impostor syndrome. Her manager suggests that she spend a month in this cabin in the West Virginia woods, where other artists have spent time and come out with their best work. With a contract looming, Dakota agrees to spend a month in the cabin to make a ten-track album.
With that setup, we are thrust into an atmospheric, nightmarish world where questions long buried within Dakota are reopened. She has to face the things that are stifling her creativity, things that are manifesting as monsters and nightmares. Project Songbird will feel like a very personal experience to anyone who has created art and put it out there in the world to be judged. The game cycles through the creative process. What we start as something that we love doing, something that we love creating – what happens to it when it’s opened up to critique or judgment? Does that diminish the work? Does that make it any less a labour of love? Should one change themselves because their audience demands it?
At its heart, Dakota’s story is reminiscent of the psychological concept of “maladaptive guilt,” which is “a pervasive, general feeling of responsibility for past events, whether justified or not.” The game does not ever really give you a clear, untainted understanding of exactly what Dakota has done or has lost. Well, not until Act 3. Instead, it leaves memory fragmented and questionable. This is actually similar to the way that guilt functions in the human mind. Guilt can cause memory to become distorted, increase feelings of personal responsibility, and highlight specific memories that support feelings of guilt. The environment itself can also become distorted. Familiar environments can become twisted into places that are hostile, implying that Dakota is not simply experiencing memories of the past. Instead, she is living through it, filtered by feelings of guilt.
Another important aspect is the dissociation and derealization. It is evident in the dream-like flow, the rapid change of environments, and the blurring lines between the memory and the current reality. It is the inability to process the trauma in any linear way. Rather than directly facing the pain, Dakota’s mind redirects it into the horror symbolism. It is actually in line with the trauma theory, which states that the mind processes the pain not as linear storytelling, but as sensory impressions, such as the sounds, spaces, and emotional peaks. Dakota returns, again and again, to the same emotional spaces: the same memories, the same failures, the same creative blocks, the same red door. Progress doesn’t feel like moving forward so much as circling something unresolved. This is why the game can feel cyclical and oppressive—it’s mimicking a mind stuck in a loop, trying and failing to “fix” something that hasn’t been fully understood.
From what I understand, the game’s creator Connor Rush himself was facing these questions while making this game. His experience and doubts about pursuing his love of video games led him to create this game, where he could reflect on his own creative journey. Sometimes the only way we can understand why we make something is by just making it.
Visually, Project Songbird can look stunning with its high-quality environmental design and a sense of instability in its aesthetic. It changes from realistic to dreamlike in a way that feels both intentional and disorienting. Strange lights and Red doors that lead to memories long forgotten. The Appalachian cabin and woods are richly detailed, with a strong sense of place, while the dream sequences are more distorted and less realistic, with a strong sense of psychological tension. What really speaks to the quality of Project Songbird, however, is how well these transitions are managed, with a sense of polish to the presentation that makes this a disorienting, immersive experience in a good way. On the audio front, Project Songbird is similarly impressive, with strong voice acting throughout, especially in quieter, more introspective moments where emotional depth is most required. Sound design is similarly well-used, moving from the ambient noise of the woods to more disquieting, distorted sounds that blend with the soundtrack itself. Perhaps most impressively, however, is the fact that Project Songbird incorporates real music from real bands, which gives a sense of grounding to Dakota’s identity as a musician, making this a more realistic, believable aspect of the game than many other indie horror games would allow for. I really vibed with some of the tracks Dakota wrote, for what it’s worth.
What I didn’t expect from Project Songbird was combat. I had fully expected it to be a walking simulator. So let’s talk about that for a bit. The combat in Project Songbird is a bit rough around the edges, with a bit of janky control and slow, heavy animation, which makes every encounter a bit clumsy and tense in equal measure. The revolver, in particular, has a weirdly tinny sound to its firing, which feels almost like it’s designed to reinforce Dakota’s lack of confidence, rather than power. Or this is just me reaching. Resource management is a big aspect of this tension, with constant management of bullets and flashlight batteries making you think twice before engaging in combat or even exploring dark areas in general. The upgrade system gives you a bit of progress in this struggle, with upgrades for the axe to make melee attacks more reliable, the revolver to make it handle more smoothly, and the hunting rifle to make its firing more impactful, but it still never lets you feel in control.
Ultimately, Project Songbird feels less like a horror game and more like a very personal unraveling of a creative mind under pressure. The game’s rough edges, from its clunky combat to its uneven pacing, do not detract from the experience so much as serve to further reinforce the game’s themes of insecurity, guilt, and self-doubt. What lingers in your mind after the credits roll is not the fear of what lurked in the woods, waiting to get you, but the uncomfortable understanding of Dakota’s internal conflict. It is a game not simply about survival, but about the weight of failure, of identity, of guilt, of whether or not you were ever good enough in the first place.
I highly recommend experiencing this game for yourself. The last act is a delicate and personal look at how what we create can consume us. It is done in a surprising but thematically resonant way that everyone who really loves games as an art form should experience.
Developer: Conner Rush
Country of Origin: USA
Publisher: Fyre Games
Release Date: 26th March 2026 (Microsoft Windows, Playstation 5)
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
The review is based on a copy of the game provided by the developers. The PS5 version of the game was played for the review.
More indie games
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Gym.
Sneakers.
Manga.
My dog.
In that order.
