Looter fluter

It has perhaps never been easier to join a witch or wizard school without being a Guy Who Rhymes With Bally Trotter. Academies of the occult abound in videogames. True, there has yet to be an amazing Little Witch Academia adaptation, and I'm still waiting for that Arbitrary Metric take on Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education, to say nothing of Failbetter's take on Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites, but in the short term, I've been enjoying the demo for Songs of Glimmerwick, which goes on sale today.

Developed by Eastshade Studios - otherwise known for an enjoyable Elder Scrollish painting game - Songs of Glimmerwick is far from a school of hard knocks. The demo tells you straight-up that you fundamentally don't have to worry about time, which I guess is worth underlining given that you'll have daily lessons and other errands.

The fully voice-acted script, meanwhile, seems friendly to the point of infantalising, but I'm very early on, getting to grips with my flute – there could be a school bully or sneering rival in the offing, and besides, I liked the bittersweet writing of the prologue (won't spoil). I also liked the process of choosing my flute, which involved such artisanal questions as "which do you prefer, a week or a thousand years?"

Sorry, allow me to explain the flute: in Songs of Glimmerwick, magic is music. You cast spells by way of an Ocarina of Time-style minigame, bashing out notes on your keyboard. The spells include songs that make gardening tools operate themselves, songs that make the fish leap into your nets, and songs that cause the undergrowth to retreat, revealing paths. It's very much not a combat game: no Iceball +5 or similar, unless I've managed to skip that particular class. I'm kind of interested to see what conflict looks like in a world of music-is-magic, actually. I think of this scene in Multiverse of Madness.

There's also potion-brewing, which involves combing the game's drowsy autumnal island for curious stems and shells and the like. I can't say I'm looking forward to gathering 5/5 mushrooms, 2/2 flints, etcetera, but I'm keen to explore the setting. There's a university garden with beehives and sunflowers, and a central village with sparkling waterways and a posse of jovial quest-givers. The art suggests a pop-up book being read by torchlight - it's perhaps too muted and non-descript when it comes to character faces, but there are lots of little mobile elements, like passing cloud shadows, to snag the eye. The voice-acting is the right kind of pantomimey, and the orchestra score is as comfy as a big velvet blanket.

Even if you're not sold on Songs of Glimmerwick - possibly because you prefer the kind of school Novik dabbles in, with its surprise disembowellings - Eastshade Studios seem like decent folk. As brought to my attention by our valiant reader Durkonkell, they've put together a few, quite generous devlogs in which they discuss the game's budget, which might seem like a vast sum on paper, and the chain of reasoning that led from the first-person Eastshade to this top-down RPG. Again, Songs of Glimmerwick is out today via Storefront That Rhymes With (Moon)Beam.