Whispering Willows Reviews
Whispering Willows is a supernatural puzzle-adventure game that sucks players in with its beautiful hand-drawn style and mystery, but doesn't bring anything too new to the genre.
Immersive audio and impressive art-style isn't quite enough to prevent the gameplay of this intriguing ghost story from being quite banal.
With just two hours of content and gameplay that never challenges you, plenty of people will dismiss Whispering Willows and never think twice about it. That's maybe not such a bad thing as it definitely isn't for everybody. It acts as an example as to why the Ouya didn't last. This was one of the better received games in the console's short lifespan and it fails to stand up to a lot of games within its own genre on the major consoles and PC. I do genuinely love the game's message overall, however. It gives a voice to a people so rarely represented in video games and does so within a story that's worth seeing. Despite its dark tone and serious subject matter, one word keeps returning to me when I think back on Whispering Willows, and that's 'charming'. It's flawed, and brief, and unchallenging, but so too is it engaging, and mysterious, and charming. Among so many other lost souls in the Willows Mansion, the ghost of the Ouya lives on.
Whispering Willows is by no means a masterpiece, but it is a beautiful world and an engaging atmosphere that unfortunately is wrapped in undeveloped gameplay and a not very compelling story. Still; it's an experience with a lot to offer for those with a love of eerie and beautiful games.
All in all, It is a very nice experience if you don't mind playing a book, watching a story or reading a game.
Whispering Willows offers up some interesting gameplay ideas behind its tale of a young girl communicating with spirits as she desperately searches for her father. It's unfortunate, then, that Night Light Interactive wasn't able to flesh out most of them, leaving its side-scrolling adventure feeling unfinished for most of the way through.
Despite some good ideas and cool design choices, Whispering Willows can't deliver a wholly fulfilling experience.
At the end of the day the question is: Would I recommend this game? I would have to say no. If you like puzzle or adventure games, Whispering Willows won't have anything new to offer you.
Elena, searching for some answers to the mystery surrounding the disappearance of her father, learns early on that an amulet in her possession will allow her to take on a ghostly spiritual form...
Whisper Willows is a good effort by an indie studio as the art style drew me in from the moment I first saw it, but it lacks any sort of depth as its puzzles aren't difficult to figure out and it's story, as horrific as it turns out to be, didn't really entice me.
Kickstarter-funded adventure game grabs its audience with a Native American horror hook, then lets it wiggle free with monotonous play.
Whispering Willows has the foundation laid for a great adventure game, but is held back by some shortcomings. Yes, there's some of the slowness in walking and loading, but this can be forgivable by players who enjoy taking their time and drinking everything in. The biggest problem lies in how it feels there could be so much more to fill this world. The game can be finished in about 3 hours, leaving a void that could have possibly been filled with deeper puzzles, deeper dialogues with the ghosts, and simply more to experience overall. What lies in this shallow grave may still be enjoyable, but let's hope a second effort comes that digs deeper.
If only the developer's care could have graced the poorly drawn cutscenes that lack the vitality of those in 1988's Ninja Gaiden. These sequences don't communicate the emotional sincerity needed to fulfill the potential of a story that humanizes its white-man villain while calling attention to the contemporary impact of his racism.
It means that for all Whispering Willows' atmosphere it can't deliver what it sets out to achieve. I don't often say games need to be longer but here, the experience needs more locations, more detail and more time to fill out its fiction to be able to tackle the themes it wants to tell.
"I don't need any night lights."
Review in Finnish | Read full review
But when you're playing a character that chooses to do all the things you can make her do, she should have understandable reasons to do them. Elena doesn't, and that numbs most of the game. I don't think Whispering Willows intended for me to ask myself why I needed to keep playing for the majority of my time with it, but it did. It's the kind of game that lacks satisfying substance, the kind of game where all you can say is that you finished it.
Despite the colorful graphics and excellent audio, Whispering Willows' plodding gameplay and under-developed plot make it hard to recommend.
The best aspect is that it does not hold the player's hand, and does grant a reasonable amount of agency the way a good adventure game does. Night Light had their heart in the right place, even if their intention exceeded their means.
The negatives never hurt Whispering Willows enough to outshine the positives. The title is a perfect match for gamers looking for the kind of survival horror title that the genre was founded on. The game might not offer the same kind of jump scares as titles like Resident Evil, but with a story inspired by the real-life cruelty of history, Whispering Willows might actually be scarier.
Whispering Willows is a super-interesting story, bundled up with a gorgeously-rendered but tiresome adventure game.