Summerfall Studios’s Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical delivers on the promise of the first part of its title. This is, after all, a game where Calliope, one of the muses of Greek myth, is murdered, but not before passing her music-based powers to a singer named Grace. As it turns out, though, the other members of the ancient Greek pantheon of gods are also alive and well in the 21st century. They hold Grace responsible for Calliope’s death, and task her with finding her killer by navigating the deities’ labyrinth of drama, vendettas, and ulterior motives. She has 48 hours to either find the murderer or take the fall for it.
That premise is conceptually strong. Stray Gods is, at bare minimum, a rock-solid mystery, awash in fresh, thoughtful, diverse, modern takes on the Greek pantheon, and held aloft by some very sharp writing. But, then, it takes all of 15 minutes for the game to completely fumble the promises made by the second half of its title. Forget any notions you might have of a turn-based RPG where XP and new powers are doled out from great songs, or a CRPG where everyone’s a bard. Stray Gods is, above all else, a visual novel/interactive drama far more akin tonally and visually to Telltale Games’s oeuvre than a Final Fantasy or Baldur’s Gate.
As for the musical portion, yes, that part’s accurate. But the irony here is that, despite being blessed with a cast of charismatic veteran voice actors who do their best to elevate the material, the game has saddled them with a bland libretto. There’s not a single showstopper or catchy hook to embed itself in the memory the second the last note in each song is sung.
All of that makes for a game that, in terms of executing an alluring, unique concept, clearly bites off more than it can chew. The saving grace—pun unintended—is that Stray Gods aces the fundamentals. The tone and aesthetic are not terribly dissimilar from the sardonic, boisterous, emotional train-wreck takes on Greek myth presented by Supergiant Games’s Hades, though some of the gods’ stories take some dark, tragic turns over the millennia.
The benefit here is being able to engage in longer conversations with these literally larger-than-life personalities, exposing their biases and pettiness, and even leading them to catharsis. At the center of it all is Grace, our protagonist, blessed with the ultimate musical gift. And while the music itself falls flat, the mechanic at its center, where Grace chooses the tone and direction of each song through branching lyrical choices, is implemented well, and it gives the player a refreshing level of agency over the game’s otherwise linear narrative.
The story twists and turns, and the company Grace keeps over time is a joy to spend a few hours with. Given that Stray Gods is the child of some of the folks behind Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Dragon Age series, the game’s strengths shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it’s hard not to be disappointed at how much it fails to teach the old gods some new tricks.
This game was reviewed with code purchased by the reviewer.
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