Whispering Willows

Genre: Graphic Adventure / Horror Game

Players: 1

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Review:

Whispering Willows is a Graphic Adventure with horror elements that places you in the role of a young girl searching an old estate grounds for her missing father, who had recently been hired as the groundskeeper before disappearing. It isn’t long before she comes to realize that the estate hides a dark history, and the ghosts of the past are threatening to become unleashed.

Literally, that is – the place is infested with actual ghosts. There are friendly ghosts, angry ghosts, ghosts that don’t realize they’re ghosts… it’s a very ghosty place. In fact, very shortly into the game, your character will learn that she herself is capable of separating her spirit from her body, allowing her to pass some obstacles, to see ghosts that would otherwise be invisible, and communicate with them.

This is an interesting gimmick that has some good potential, but it doesn’t really seem to get put to good use. Often, times when you need to use this ability just seem to be cases of “oh, another small hole I can’t fit into. Guess it’s time to do that spirit thing again”. Not very inspired. Beyond that, the puzzles seem to be fairly simple and straightforward, nothing especially unique or inventive for the genre.

Visually, this game looks fine, with a somewhat cartoonish style that doesn’t really work for the creepy atmosphere the game wants to have, but doesn’t get in the way of it either. But wow, this game has a lot of text for a game whose writing isn’t all that noteworthy…

In the end, Whispering Willows is an okay Graphic Adventure with a decent premise that it doesn’t really do enough to deliver on. Fans of the genre might find it an interesting diversion, but everyone else is probably best moving on to something else.

tl;dr – Whispering Willows is a Graphic Adventure game with heavy horror elements about a girl searching a haunted estate for her missing father. The game has some interesting concepts, but doesn’t do enough to make good use of them, and its puzzles and atmosphere feel somewhat uninspired.

Grade: C

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