Published 20.06.2023

Author: [OP] BubblesUK

Children of Silentown Review

Description

Developers - Elf Games, Luna2 Studios.

Publisher - Daedalic Entertainment

Children of Silentown is a dark adventure game that tells the story of Lucy, a girl growing up in a village deep in a forest inhabited by monsters.
People disappearing is nothing uncommon here, but this time, Lucy is old enough to investigate on her own. Or so she thinks.

Children of Silent Town features 5 full chapters of head-spinning puzzles and adventure that can and will rock your brains to work, mine is still hurting after completing it.

Go through each of the chapters, and learn the story about the mysterious disappearances of adults and kids alike, I have a theory about that, which I will explain further down in this list, so watch out (SPOILER ALERTS)

Gameplay elements

• Story

The story is rich and deep, I didn't think I'd like this game as much as I did if I'm being completely honest here.

It's incredibly impactful in certain aspects, and you get to see the character grow along with her friends. I love the way the story goes from just a normal quiet day playing with friends to getting lost in the woods at night.

What I really enjoyed was the incorporation of song and singing into the game, that was a very nice touch, and very pleasing to the ears.

• Characters

Each character has their own unique style, flavour and personality, and you can actually feel it as you play and interact. They all have their quirks, and they all have their disadvantages.

Want to know them more? Just sing to them, and it will even let you see what they are currently thinking about.

As you get to know your friends and family, you begin to develop backstories, and I thought this was great, as I do tend to like lore in most games that I play, I love learning about how they got to that point.

• Controls

For a simple point-and-click, there is not much room for error, but it is not exactly fine-tuned either.

I found some issues trying to interact with specific objects like ropes in Chapter 5, and trying to move Lucy into a specific location with no luck, but nonetheless, I feel that it is fairly intuitive.

• Puzzles

Oh my god, what can I even say about these?

Each puzzle is complex, but they also have simple solutions. My favourite puzzles were the ones where you must sew together buttons to fix memories, and don't even get me started on the puzzles where you must rotate blocks to form pathways! Those made my brain hurt the most.

I liked the challenge, as you progress through the story, the puzzles become slightly harder until eventually, you reach stages where you can get blocked by teleports.

BUT! The game is filled with open-world puzzles like finding your friends in hide and seek, or doing a certain set of tasks in order to find one specific friend. (Hint check the hay stacks)

In my opinion, each chapter is a puzzle in itself, which was great as I would always have to find a solution. Got to keep that brain going and working!

• Graphical / Audio quality

I'd highly recommend you have sounds playing, as Lucy's voice is top-notch, though it's only a short and sweet melody that she sings, it's rather soothing, with 4 different melodies to sing.

Ambience sounds are reasonably well made as well as the standard background music and Sound Effects.

Graphical quality is well crafted too, it seems hard drawn for the most part and gives off a colourful, but dull vibe. I know, that makes no sense, but it's the best way to describe it!

Summary

It's a great game, with at least 6-7 hours worth of playing, I'd highly recommend playing it.

Oh, almost forgot... The theory...

My theory for the ending is that there are 2 possible outcomes, one outcome is this;

When you finally get back to the village with what seems like a friendly white wolf, you notice that she protects you and helps you quite often, you see that's your mother.

What if the village was just Spirits that have forgotten who they were, because you see Lucy is also a wolf-like creature at the end in the eyes of the villagers. What if going outside of the village reveals your true nature, your true self?

Makes sense, no?