Songs of Silence

This review was created using an LCD Steam Deck. OLED testing will be carried out soon.

Songs of Silence is in early access, so performance and content is subject to changes.

Songs of Silence is a somewhat different take on the 4X genre, with a deep focus on the narrative and characters. I love strategy games and titles that feature strong narratives, so you can imagine how excited I was when Songs of Silence launched into early access earlier this year. The game is an enjoyable, if sometimes rough, experience. Due to some unfortunate problems regarding the text size, I could not progress as far as I wanted.

When starting Songs of Silence for the first time, I was strongly reminded of Songs of Conquest, another indie strategy title that recently left Early Access. Both games feature story-heavy campaigns, although Songs of Silence has full voice acting in its favor. The voice acting overall is pretty good, and it got me immersed in the story.

The narrative itself is relatively cookie-cutter as fantasy stories go. Two different races of light and darkness fight for control of the world, and only one can survive. The player takes on the role of the Starborn, and under the command of Queen Lorelai, you must fight back against the forces of darkness. It might not be the original story, but the setting and characters go a long way to sell it. Songs of Silence deeply emphasizes the narrative exploring its world in stark contrast against its rivals.

What I did not expect was how gorgeous the game was. For a 4X title, I was blown away by the visuals on hand, and even on the LCD Steam Deck, it looks fantastic. The map is vibrant with rich environments, making the game feel alive. Cities burn and smolder after a siege, and the terrain turns as armies traverse. It feels like every movement you make on the map has real consequences.

Unlike Songs of Conquest and many other strategy games, Songs of Silence favors an autobattling system for its battle mechanics. You cannot manually control where your forces attack but can manipulate the battlefield and armies through an interesting card system. There are a lot of different card modifiers to use throughout the game, and they operate on a timer system to avoid power spam.

I prefer this method over a ‘once and you’re done’ system, especially when you can hurl fireballs upon enemy armies with the click of a button. Other powers include healing units, protecting your forces from attack, summoning allies, and debilitating enemy units. That is a lot of variety and adds depth to the autobattling system. A 4X game with the auto battle is rare, and Songs of Silence manages it fairly well. While most auto battlers bore me after a while, Songs of Silence’s great visuals make battles enjoyable to interact with.

Battles can get quite frantic, forcing you to make snap decisions. In one early battle, I mistakenly attacked a much larger army, which was destroyed. By summoning Astral reinforcements behind enemy lines, I could divert enemy attention long enough for my surviving troops to rout the enemy. I encountered a few bugs, such as my cavalry units trying to return to their starting position right after a charge, which is not wise when my enemies are armed with big, anti-horse weapons. Patches in recent weeks have reduced the frequency of these bugs.

On the map, Songs of Silence plays like you would expect from a fantasy 4X. Recruit units in controlled cities with the same card system as in the battle mode, and you can construct new buildings the same way. Armies replenish when in a city, and you can bolster garrisons as well: you need all the help you can get because this is a challenging game, even on the easiest setting. While you must be aggressive with your military to stand a chance of survival, it must be done carefully. I have had to restart a few times because I overextended. After taking an enemy settlement, I had no time to replenish my army before the counterattack, and my poor queen was slaughtered. And this was in the first mission!

Above all else, Songs of Silence offers something new to the classic 4X genre, and it is a pretty solid game all around. Even for the Early Access version, there are enough bells and whistles to keep players invested, and the skirmish mode offers some additional replayability while waiting for more story updates. It needs more work with optimization, especially on the Steam Deck, which is a power-hungry game. Even high-end computers will struggle with this one. While the combat and empire-building mechanics are decent, it could spice things up with more options, such as random events.

There is also a skirmish mode, allowing up to six players to be on a map. A few modifiers can be unlocked to keep things fresh without big story elements. It's a nice way to play a quick game without narrative-driven elements.

And yes, all of this gloriousness is playable on the Steam Deck, with some compromises.

Songs of Silence - Steam Deck Performance

Songs of Silence is classed as Unknown by Valve, which is a fair assessment. This is an incredibly power-hungry game for the genre, and while it is playable on the Steam Deck, a few things are holding it back.

At vanilla settings, Songs of Silence runs smoothly enough with the Deck’s prowess, but it eats power and battery like I eat chocolate eclairs. With a 60hz refresh rate and an unlocked TDP, I experienced an average power draw of 18 watts, spikes up to 20 watts during battles. That is pretty significant, and it runs hotter than I would like. Without any adjustments, you can expect battery life on the LCD Deck to be around 2 hours.

Songs of Silence has several graphical options to tweak, a big improvement from the demo I played at the beginning of 2024. One nice thing about Songs of Silence is that you can drop many graphical settings to a minimum while not sacrificing too much on visuals. Conversely, I found little point in having graphics set above medium with the LCD Deck’s screen.

Changing the refresh rate to 40hz saves a little on power draw, although I found the game needs a high TDP to maintain a stable 30fps. I messed around with the resolution scale, manual screen resolution settings, and FSR to see how far I could push the game for battery life. My most extreme result was with a resolution scale of 0.5 and a 4W TDP with all settings on low. While the game was technically playable with these settings in the campaign map, with frame rates hovering in the mid-20s, I cannot recommend going to such lengths. This is why I do these experiments: you do not have to!

For the most balanced mix between performance and battery life, I found that a 6W TDP lock with low and standard resolution settings allowed some power draw savings while maintaining 30fps in most cases. This gave me an average power draw of 13w, although battery life was less than 3 hours. If you want a stable 40FPS for extra performance with medium settings, you will need an unlocked TDP and 40hz to make it a smooth experience. You will save a little on battery life compared to stock, but I found the benefits modest at best. On an LCD Steam Deck, you will gain perhaps an extra half hour of playtime.

One bright spot is the controls. Unlike other strategy titles, Songs of Silence is fully playable with a controller, and I had no problems with the controls on the Steam Deck.

Accessibility

Songs of Silence is available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Korean, and Turkish.

You can toggle the in-game tutorial, adjust the interface scale, and apply gamma correction, and there is a colorblind mode.

However, the small text size was a major obstacle for me. This is a dialogue and word-heavy game, and while interface scaling exists, I could not read the text well, even with the text size at maximum. It got to the point I suffered frequent headaches while playing, and I had to keep taking breaks. I was the only one on the team with severe eye strain with the small text, for instance, but it is worth mentioning. Songs For Silence is difficult to recommend if you struggle with eye strain or small text. Because of this problem, I could not play as much of the game as I would otherwise.

Noah Kupetsky here. I also played Songs of Silence but didn't personally have this eye strain issue. I don't think the issue will affect everybody, but it's worth mentioning if you are sensitive to screens and smaller text.

Conclusion

There is much to like in Songs of Silence. We do not get many fantasy variants within the 4X genre, and a gorgeous game like this one with auto-battler mechanics is even rarer. The story and characters are solid, and there are plenty of units and powers to get stuck into.

This is an Early Access game, so there is a long way to go. Hopefully, the developers can improve performance in the future. The high price tag and sometimes rough optimization might put people off, but for the 4X genre, Songs of Silence is unique enough to get people’s attention, and it is pretty awesome on the Steam Deck, regardless.

I will be keeping a close eye on this!

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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