Late For Every Class In Glimmerwick, But The Farming And Music Are Worth It

The mill is cursed. A goblin put it there, and the ferry girl refuses to run the ferry until she gets a blueberry pastry. In Songs of Glimmerwick, that is the kind of problem you walk into on a regular basis.

The game drops you on an island with no plan and no intent, and then hands you a student roster that says your name is on it. You arrive by boat, get a flute from a kindly flutemaker, and a uniform and school supplies from the villagers. Then you start learning magic by playing rhythm charts.

A Curse, A Ferry, And A Blueberry Pastry

The curse on the mill is the engine of the early game. To fix it, you need to learn a song that uncurse it. To learn that song, you need to travel to the mountains. But you just arrived on the island a little over a week ago, and you don’t know where the mountains are.

The north is blocked by a big tree root, and you’re not sure how to get rid of it. One of your classmates at the Etchery invented a potion that can reverse plant growth, and you want to try it. But to make the potion, you need a specific flower that you don’t have yet.

You’ve bought flower seeds, planted them in your garden, and they’ll bloom in a few days. In the meantime, you’ve just figured out how to fish, you’ve got a tabletop campaign going, and at some point, someone will probably want you to attend class.

Magic Is Music, And So Is Everything Else

The magic system in Songs of Glimmerwick is entirely music-based. You learn spells by playing short rhythm charts. Score a minimum, and you can cast the spell without playing the whole thing every time. Score highly, and you improve the spell’s impact each time.

Potionmaking is a fun little ingredient-sorting game. Fishing is a rhythm game where each fish has its own melody. The songs you’ve learned so far mostly manipulate the environment: you can magic a hoe, a pick, and an axe to clean up brush while you focus on seed planting.

The Etchery feels small for a premiere magical school, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. The camera is pulled far back to showcase the gorgeous fantasy world, and everyone wears near-identical uniforms, which makes telling people apart at a glance difficult.

The Story Moves At Its Own Pace

Songs of Glimmerwick is not a game with a sense of urgency. Whole days pass where nothing happens at all. The calendar flips, the clock freezes, and the game waits for you to arrive at class. You’ll never miss a lecture.

There’s an underlying story that touches on ideas like religious zealotry and prescriptivism, and on who gets to make decisions for the collective whole. The main character is a fairly neutral, customizable stand-in for the player, but their backstory is interesting: escaping fundamentalism at any cost, and inadvertently stumbling upon the exact antidote to their own history.

Conversely, most of the main characters are bland. The fish guy living on land for the first time is enthused by kimchi, and your roommate blows up the fireplace on the first day and expects you to solve it.

A Day In The Life Of A Witch Student

On a given day, you might have a class, or not. A letter arrives telling you when to show up. In between classes, you have occasional social engagements and a job tending the campus garden.

The garden was an absolute disaster when you first showed up, but with the spells you learned, it’s slowly looking nicer. You’re growing basil and marjoram, several kinds of flowers, and cranberries in the pond.

You sell a lot of this, but much of it goes to potion ingredients. Everyone in town and in the school is always asking you for potions for something or another.

The Island Keeps Turning

The game leaves you free to structure the in-between hours however you like. Some mornings you wake up and find that some jackass has filled the halls with cryptic, cultish pamphlets about burning the forest down. These things happen whether you grow the garden, explore, engage with the town, or just stand around and sleep all day.

“If I talk to people, they may or may not tell me something interesting, and they may or may not ask me to do something for them.”

No one ever has big clonky quest markers on their heads in Glimmerwick. There’s no endless task list to check off. You talk to people, and they may or may not tell you something interesting. They may or may not ask you to do something for them.

What We Make Of It

The game is from the developer of Eastshade, a game the reviewer loved very, very dearly back in 2019. It’s taken a little longer to become enchanted with Glimmerwick in the same way, but the direction is moving that way.

Eastshade captivated with its strong sense of place. It was a game about learning and loving every cranny of a small, intimate, beautiful island. Glimmerwick is different. It’s about going to magic school, musical magic school, and it’s slower, looser, and more open-ended.

The pacing feels remarkably like college must have felt to people who didn’t take a completely overfull course load. It’s a sleepy, gentle magic university with no rush and no deadline.

Where The Story Goes From Here

The curse on the mill needs to be fixed. The tree root needs to be removed. The ferry needs to run again. The game is determined to march on as the calendar pages flip, and the player is determined to keep up at their own pace.

The game gives you freedom to structure your hours, and it waits for you to arrive. That’s the charm of Songs of Glimmerwick. You can be perpetually late to class, and the game is still having a great time.

Source material: “I’m Having A Great Time With This Musical Witch School Farm Sim Even If I’m Always Late To Class,” Kotaku.

game review · Indie Games · rhythm games · simulation games · witchcraft games