Songs of Glimmerwick is a Beautiful Symphony, But Not For Everyone
A game crafted from passion and promise, flawed by cozy limitations.
Songs of Glimmerwick intrigued me with its unique magical system of flute playing to cast spells. The comparison to Harry Potter is a guarantee. And while Hogwarts Legacy and Glimmerwick hold some similarities in their characters and classes, one is more polished than the other.
Attend Glimmerwick University, grow crops as the Etchery’s gardener, and cast spells with your personalized flute. Music makes the world go around, but something wants to stop it.
Songs of Glimmerwick is stunning
Its visuals remind me of a child’s pop-up book, but with gorgeous lighting, fantastic attention to detail, and a whimsical soundtrack. Visually similar to Beacon Pines, Winter Burrow, and Fran Bow, Glimmerwick certainly has a calmness to playing it. The world gives Glimmerwick a sense of grandness and scale, yet it’s far smaller to explore than you probably expected. Because of this, you will spend most of your time jumping between the Etchery (school) and completing NPC requests.
Pacing and hand-holding
Songs of Glimmerwick has a tedious introduction of gathering items and listening to exposition after exposition. The overstated importance of the Silence and Etchery is told on a loop, damaging its intrigue. Because of this and its flawed questlines, I was indifferent to its narrative.
I’m no side quest fan (that much is obvious), but Glimmerwick’s quests (main and side) are particularly repetitive in design. Taking on townsfolk requests and completing them just to get five extra steps feels like it’s purposely filling your time due to a surprising lack of exploration.
I can appreciate quests not hand-holding you the entire time. You get a summary of what each NPC wants with no obvious route on how to get there and solve it. The problem is, side quests drastically slow down the pace of the game. Outside of XP, there’s no real incentive to complete these requests except to fill your day with action. If you don’t do these quests, you’ll find there’s not much to do in this world. To combat this, Glimmerwick doesn’t restrict you to a tight schedule. Time freezes both in the evening and during main events. It’s a great mechanic that lets you spend as long as you’d like.
Wasted fantasy elements in favor of typical RPG format
Its unique selling point is massively underutilized. Spell casting and flute playing aren’t the core gameplay mechanic of Glimmerwick. Instead, it’s reduced to a simple push of a button after a spell is learnt. You have this Guitar Hero-like minigame to fish and learn a spell. Once learnt, you select the spell using Mana and confirm to execute an action (i.e., plow, chop, and pick). There’s a slight learning curve with this, but after a while you start to wonder why you can’t just plant crops with your own hands.
Glimmerwick takes pride in the narrative unfolding before you
The world is vibrant and full of locals, but everything is one-dimensional. Beautiful, but flat. Aside from Clover—who stands out for her clear inability to cast magic in a magic school—everyone has the same pleasant personality, regardless of species and sex. The voice acting is great, but conflict is mostly external, driven by the mystery of the Silence. A huge selling point is socializing, yet the characters blur into one, lessening its narrative impact.
Sadly, Songs of Glimmerwick isn’t for me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not for you. Its slower pace doesn’t feel deliberate, but rather the result of poorly designed quests and flat storytelling that feels childish most of the time. I believe cozy gamers who enjoyed the demo will love the full release, and if you like witty, hopeful dialogue from start to finish, then your journey through Glimmerwick will surely be worth your time.
