The Whisperer

This is the prologue to The Whispering Valley | La vallée qui murmure. It's a point 'n click with fixed positions, but you can look around in 3d. Graphics are very barebone. But what did I just play? I think I murdered my father. Don't know why. And then you've done it and it ends. And that's about as far as I got regarding the 'story'. The game itself doesn't give any clues about what to do. There isn't that much content so it's pretty easy to figure out. Except when you miss an interactable spot so you don't even know why you got some seemingly important item that should be used there. I really hope it makes sense after playing the main game, but boy this was underwhelming. [i]Edit: quick update: currently been playing the main game for about an hour. That one also looks basic, though it's better than this prologue. And so far I'm liking it. Quite intriging.[/i]

Ambient sound often does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to building tension and it's no different in The Whisperer. There's no music, just the howling of the wind to keep you company as you wander the snow shrouded woods, looking for clues. And I got to hear plenty of that wind as I spent most of my time lost. Finding all the interaction points in a scene was more of an issue here than it is in most point-and-click games. Though the solutions themselves weren't that esoteric once you knew the options. Ultimately, the only mystery is spelled out right after the prologue and that mystery is solved without much distraction, making for a short experience. The twist is considerably more obtuse, but I suspect that's the intention. It's clear what's happened to the brothers. The particulars of our protagonist, however, those can be left to wonder.

Really nice aesthetics and atmosphere, but unfortunately there's just not enough content to it. Beat it in half an hour and I didn't find the payoff satisfying at all, despite hints of an interesting and creepy presence.

Point & click games have a rather rough reputation and I feel like this game is the epitome of all of the negative sides of the genre. The story was quite confusing, so throughout the whole thing I had absolutely no idea what my or my character's goal was supposed to be. Because of that the game was filled to the brim with "try everything on everything" -sort of puzzles as well as weird logic leaps, which sure is always "fun" in games like this. The game was only about an hour long, but I still feel like that was an hour I could've used to play something better than this.

No

Great atmosphere in the game! It's really good, I would had take more of it!