I'm not going to hit you all again with my usual spiel about how Indie adventure games have been a powerful force for change in a genre that was mostly all text parsers and walls of verbs like "smell" and "put in butt" before the '00s, as it could practically be a copy/pasted disclaimer at this point with the amount of times I've wheeled it out, but I will add a corollary to my pitch that the Indie sphere is not only discovering new mechanical ways to tell stories, but custom-shaping the interactive medium to be as interactive, descriptive, or as narrative complex as the situation - or specifically, the story - demands. The Lion's Song from Austrian developers Mi'pu'mi Games is an episodic adventure game about artists, their inspirations, their struggles, and the threads that connect them and their works subtextually to the world in which they inhabit. Despite a classic point-and-click interface with pop-up text for hotspots and multiple-choice NPC dialogue trees the game isn't particularly interactive and while it has decisions they tend to be less of the branching narrative kind and instead has more of a cosmetic, "this is how you chose to see this person's story through" sort of relationship with the player. At least, that's how it seems just a few episodes in.

Set in an early 20th century version of Vienna, and following four young professionals in their endeavors, the game presents an atmospheric paean to the creative process, though not one that glosses over the hardships of attempting to spin artistic gold out of the threads that are the familial, platonic, and romantic connections that inspire us most strongly, as well as one's physical surroundings and the tones and sights and colors of everyday life in one of Europe's most picturesque capital cities. The first episode, for instance, focuses on the young musician and composer Wilma Doerfl who is sequestered to the remote mountain cabin of her teacher (and unrequited love interest) in order to get over her writer's block and finish her latest composition in supposed peace and quiet. Instead, she suffers a week of inclement weather that builds to a raging storm, struggling both with a sudden and unexpected deadline for her work and the concomitant stress of letting down Vienna's cultural elite. It's only after an accidental phone call from a gregarious innkeeper named Leos (the "lion" of the title), whose guileless enthusiasm proves to be a beacon of supportive light in a dark moment, that Wilma is able to find the inspiration she needs to complete her piece in time.

The second episode expands on the structure of the first, creating a less linear path and even an overworld map to traverse: Franz Markert is a promising young painter with the ability to see the "layers" of people, but is plagued with self-doubt and a persistent feeling that his paintings never capture the subject in full - some layers remain elusive when putting them to canvas. What follows are two pairs of potential subjects - the first includes a boastful soldier and an unexpectedly compassionate banker, while the second includes an aging actress and a skittish mathematician with an enigmatic duality - that the player selects between, before the episode ends with Franz seeking therapy for his stress-induced blackouts and reaching a decision about his art. The third jumps from the art world to that of math and science, though still tackles a story about finding an ever elusive acceptance and acclaim as the player takes the role of Emma Recniczek: a woman who strives to be taken seriously as a mathematician, and finds herself cross-dressing as one "Dr. Emil Schell" to get in with a local gentlemen's club of math scholars. The fourth and final episode focuses on Albert Vogl, a former journalist who finds himself in a train compartment with three men who have connections with the prior protagonists: Wilma's younger brother Otto; Paul, an art forger who admired and profited off Markert; and Theodor, a student of Recniczek's. The three share stories of their famous associates, offering a little more of their backgrounds as well as what they've been up to since their episodes concluded. Vogl does his best to use these yarns to encourage the three about their near futures, hinting at the train's eventual destination.

Each episode is a little longer and more complex both mechanically and in its themes than the last, which suggests the developers were getting more confident with each new iterative release. That confidence also extends to how its version of Vienna becomes more detailed and dynamic by the recurring characters and ideas that pop up in successive stories; for instance, the mathematician that Franz meets and could potentially draw is in fact Emma in her drag get-up, and if the player was wondering why Schell suddenly changed his mind and departed the painting session in a hurry in Episode 2 they would understand explicitly why by Episode 3. (With regards to its more complex themes, Episode 3 also allows the player to resolve Emma's inner-conflict about her Emil persona as either a means to an end to get her theory completed, or a full-blown transgender/non-binary awakening. As with Life is Strange's central relationship and how the player can choose to make it romantic or platonic in nature, the game subtly establishes either path as valid possibilities and allows the player's own interpretation to solidify one as the truth.)

As tends to be the case with these decision-heavy games, each episode offers a post-mortem that lets you see how many others made the same decisions you did: minor choices like having Wilma introduce herself to this stranger on the phone were almost unanimously towards the positive, while more personal choices like what Wilma ultimately wants from her burgeoning career in the music business was much more split between the love for her mentor, her desire for fame and fortune, or to return home to her family and the simple life she once knew. The game provides the convenient option to warp to specific points of an episode when these decisions were made, if the player wishes to see how an alternative choice plays out. Naturally, these decisions also have unexpected repercussions in later episodes too, and the game tracks the most significant of these connections in a museum-like area of the main menu. It's a clever way to tip their hat to their long-term plans for the series, as well as giving players an excuse to try some other decision branches to see what other connections can be made through the gift of hindsight.

I will say that between the game's muted sepia-toned color scheme and its introspective and contemplative narratives it can be a little leisurely-paced, somber, and uneventful compared to even other adventure games, but those qualities also lend the game an uncommon maturity that might appeal to an audience looking for deeper themes in their video gaming narratives. The pixel character animations are nonetheless smooth and expressive, and its version of Vienna when it was still a Mecca for scholars and artists prior to the Great War is lovingly rendered by its artist(s). Given the musical theme of the first episode you might not be surprised to discover a solid orchestral score by German composition group Dynamedion, which has worked on many larger games in the past (if you heard classical music in the background while killing rich people in the first Hitman reboot, for instance, it may well have been them).

I'm not sure if the game's messages of art through adversity and how the journey of an artist is often the journey to understand themselves necessarily speaks to me as a creative - because I really ought to be using quotation marks around that word if we're referring to my rambling musings on here - but the anthology style and the imaginative presentation of its stories have a broader appeal that I think most fans of narrative games can get behind, even if there's very little in the way of the usual item puzzles to solve (you have no accessible inventory, for one) or other such gameplay-centric diversions. I appreciated the way the world continued to expand and connect in successive episodes, and The Lion's Song overall has that remarkable quality distinct to episodic games from smaller studios where it feels like the developers are markedly improving upon their craft with each new entry. Also, don't be fooled by the comparative brevity of its first and only free episode, Silence, as each successive episode tends to be much longer (with the exception of the last, as that really just serves as an epilogue). If you have any interest in the limits of narrative games as a storytelling medium, and how our perception of same continues to expand as developers tackle new themes and new ways to visually and aurally deliver their stories, or just have an interest in historical games that strive for verisimilitude, it might be worth seeking this modest but thoughtful game out.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

P.S. For those curious about the choices I made, here are the rundowns from all four episodes: