Elisabetta Golzio
This review of The Hourglass Sings comes as a surprise to us as it does to you. The little manual in question came to us together with Sock Puppets, written by the same author, Kurt Refling. We weren’t expecting it but it was a very pleasant surprise, so much so that it deserved this article.
If you are interested in purchasing it, you can find it here in digital format (a 32-page PDF) at the price of 6 dollars in English, along with the audiobook and a Google Sheets designed for those who play online with other players.
Let’s see together what product it is and who could potentially be fascinated by it.
A Serenade to The Legend of Zelda
If something happens to you, remember this song
This quote, taken from The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, is the first thing you will find inside the manual. This is because The Hourglass Sings is a storytelling game inspired by the famous Nintendo videogame. In 120 minutes, the party (1 to 6 people) will play the three entities of this adventure: the Country, the Darkness and the Hero. Will the Hero be able to stop the approaching end of the world or are they all destined for oblivion?
At the disposal of the Hero we will have a small musical object that will allow us to rewind time. Every time we decide to use this power, we will hum a decided tune with the rest of the players and we will wake up at a sort of save point within the country. Does it seem like you are inside a video game? Well, the idea is a bit like that. Except that our inventiveness will play a fundamental role within the story, this time.
The Hourglass Sings Review: How to Play?
As mentioned, there are three main roles. If you play alone, you will obviously play all three roles. If there are three or six players, you can keep your role throughout the game (in the second case, sharing it). In the remaining cases, you will play in turns in the following order: the Country, the Darkness and the Hero.
To help us create the plot, we will have a deck of playing cards (including jokers). For each card and for each role we will find a hint of what could happen.
For example, the 3 of spades can have three different meanings:
- The spade suit, in the case of the Country, has the meaning of describing a place in the city. Specifically, the 3 is a secret passage.
- For the Darkness, however, the spades imply that a character within the city has completely changed appearance in your eyes. The 3 indicates that they are shielded from pain.
- For the Hero, the suit of the card gives us indications about their past, specifically a memory of them. The 3 recalls a specific garment.
We may decide to create our plot in a single session or to divide it into a campaign. Our stories, however, will end in two cases: when we finish the 54 cards in the deck or if we are satisfied with the success of the plot.
Plenty of Space for Imagination
Inside the manual we find various examples relating to the creation of our three basic “characters”, but we are also told that at any moment we could find new possibilities with our imagination.
Will our Country be an island, a collection of ruins, a wilderness? Does the Darkness have the power to make buildings come alive? Call the seas back? Reject the light, awakening nightmares? And who represents this entity? A disused toy, an undead or simply a wounded ex-lover? And will our Hero be young, old or an incorporeal entity? Will the instrument at the base of their powers be a music box, a rhombus or even a hurdy-gurdy?
Before embarking on our journey, let’s agree together on these essential details for the success of the adventure, so as to make our stories related to the cards coherent.
The Hourglass Sings Review Conclusions
If you are a fan of The Legend of Zelda, you can’t fail to take this little pearl into consideration. Like any good narrative game, the difference is made by the people at the table, but the ideas given by the manual exude an unconditional love for the original work that you will hardly be able to ignore.
This booklet, in fact, was created for an event organized in April 2024 specifically for Majora’s Mask.
The font and layout are very simple, typical of an amateur project, but the publication is embellished with eight-bit illustrations created by the author and inspired by a Devil’s Blush Project work.
Feel free to add this game to your Link saga items altar. Because we all have it, right?
