Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story Review Mini – Review Mini
I have no idea who these people are but I like them.
Song of Nunu is the latest in a series of spinoffs from the highly successful League of Legends. Like the rest, the goal is to expand the world and characters while also appealing to an entirely new audience. As part of that new audience, I can say that’s working pretty well. Song of Nunu caught my attention due to its developer, Tequila Works, who also developed a personal favorite of mine, Rime.
Song of Nunu is very much in the same vein as Rime, though with a more straightforward story. This is a narrative driven, adventure game sprinkled with light platforming, puzzle solving, and combat. You play as a young boy named Nunu who is joined by a large friendly yeti named Willump. Together you’ll travel a frozen and beautiful landscape in search of Nunu’s mother. Along the way you’ll stumble into a threat from a mysterious dark ice that is slowly covering and infecting the world. The relationship between Nunu and Willump is really the star of the show. They constantly chatter back and forth with each other cracking jokes and helping each other out. You’ll seamlessly move from controlling Nunu to Willump as he picks up Nunu to navigate through more platforming focused areas of the environment.
As you progress you’ll encounter a variety of puzzles. These are generally solved by either throwing snowballs at various environmental weak points, or through the use of Nunu’s flute. The latter of these factors into some of the most interesting elements of Song of Nunu’s gameplay. While using the flute, the L, R, ZL, and ZR buttons each play a different note. Combining two buttons results in even more notes. Across the world you’ll find markings that indicate different notes and will quickly learn to sight read entire pieces of music without difficulty. Playing different songs or individual notes will then cause different elements of the environment to react. It’s a bit like an entire puzzle mechanic built around the Ocarina from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.
Combat is Song of Nunu’s weakest element. It isn’t bad, it’s merely bland. Combat amounts to very basic brawler encounters between Willump and a very limited selection of enemy types. Luckily these are by far the least common of the primary gameplay sections. The majority of the game is happy to let you explore, platform, and puzzle solve, which all feel great.
For the most part the Switch version runs quite well. You can definitely feel that the Switch was the primary target console during development as Song of Nunu is releasing as a Switch console exclusive. Image quality isn’t a full 1080p, but it remains sharp and good looking throughout the adventure. The frame rate also holds up most of the time. There are some harsh drops when transitioning from one large area to another, but in my experience these never cropped up while I was doing anything other than just walking from one point to another. They never interfered with combat or complex platforming. It’s also worth noting that it runs significantly better than Rime did when it first launched on the Switch.
Song of Nunu is a cozy, charming, and endearing adventure game that by no means needs to be limited to fans of League of Legends. It is a largely smooth experience on Switch with great puzzles that are fun to solve, while not being overly challenging. The flute playing mechanics are legitimately unique and feel like something out of a lost Zelda game. If you like straightforward adventure games like Rime, Song of Nunu is an easy recommendation.
