Whispering Willows is a horror puzzle game. The game starts with Elena lost in the family catacombs as she tries to find her missing father. The game starts off pretty slow, but somewhat creepy. The graphics are great: not realistic enough that I found them scary, but they are beautiful. As Elena continues through the catacombs, she collects pieces of the diary that begin to tell her the story. She also finds out that through her amulet, she can change to a ghostly form and communicate with other ghosts to learn a bit more about the story. Switching to the ghostly form is also necessary in some cases to solve the puzzle. The game mechanics are pretty typical for this type of game. I didn’t notice anything groundbreaking or out of the ordinary. If anything, I found the game mechanics a little tedious. For example, when she leaves her ghostly form, she has to go back and rejoin her physical body wherever she left it, which causes a bit of backtracking. I also sometimes get a bit tired of games that require me to constantly change forms to solve the puzzles. But, although I was a bit disappointed in that, it does somewhat work with the story.
Even though the games starts a bit slow, the narrative seems interesting enough to keep going. The game seems to have strong Native American themes, and I’ll be interested to see what (if anything) they do with that. And, of course, I’m also interested to see what they will do with the female protagonist. The first hour didn’t really give me a good idea if she will be strong or not. You learn the story in a typical manner, by picking up notes that seem somewhat disconnected at first. At first, I was skeptical that the game would really be scary (so far it’s not), but some of the sound effects definitely give parts of it a creepy vibe.
I found it difficult to get a solid feel for the game in the first hour of play, and this is actually the only game I’ve played while in Scotland. I feel like this game will need a bit more time to really get going, but I did find it interesting enough to continue. Whispering Willows began as a Kickstarter in 2013, and it looks like they raised about $20,000 for development. The game looks pretty good for that budget. If you like horror puzzle or narrative driven games, pick this one up. Whispering Willows is currently $14.99 on Steam, but I’m sure you can catch it on sale soon. I love narrative driven games, so I’m excited to finish this one.
