In search of the truth
Our adventure takes place in Silentown, a small town in the heart of a dark forest. The many nocturnal disappearances feed the local urban legend. Monsters populate the woods and in order not to attract their attention, the inhabitants restrain the youngest. Don’t play too loudly, don’t go out after dark, don’t sing too loudly; Lucy is annoyed by all these rules, especially since the adults bring no proof of their fear. They don’t even look for the missing. It’s decided, we’re going to carry out our own investigations.
Our investigation is not easy and each step towards the truth requires the resolution of a puzzle or an enigma. Although their difficulty is progressive, we quickly stumble on some of them. Fortunately, the inhabitants of the village very often provide us with ideas that allow us to move forward.
A not-so-classic point’n click
As in any good point’n click, you have to be curious and go through your environment with a fine-tooth comb in order to flush out the object or the clue allowing you to solve an enigma. The title pushes the gameplay a little further with the addition of well-thought-out mechanics. Throughout the adventure, we collect musical notes which, put end to end, constitute a melody. Each of these works gives us a special ability. We can thus read the minds of the inhabitants or extract a memory linked to a particular object. But not everything is as easy as it seems because we must first solve a puzzle in order to probe a spirit or an object.
The downside to this mechanic is that it leads to a lack of diversity since there are only three different types of mini-games (one per song). It’s a shame, because it could have represented a real break with the classic combination of objects, for example.
cute but dark
The artistic direction of Children of Silentown seems to find its inspiration among the works of Tim Burton. Although the hand-drawn 2D environments sport pretty pastel colors, there is a dark, heavy feel to them. We regret, however, that they are not more varied. Of the five chapters in the adventure, three take place in our very cramped village.
This lack of diversity is reflected in the soundtrack. Each environment has its own musical loop which can become tiresome, especially when you spend time in the same place.
Questionable lifespan
During our first game, it did not take more than ten hours to conclude our investigation. This lifespan, although in the low average, remains reasonable for a title offered at € 19.99. What is more debatable is the choice of developers to increase it.
The title offers four endings but the absence of a choice of chapter once the conclusion of the story has been revealed forces the player to redo the whole adventure from scratch by launching a “new game +”. However, this does not bring any advantage and does not change the puzzles of the game. We must therefore repeat the same thing four times to arrive at the end scene and make one of the four possible choices.
Only completists will therefore find replayability in order to unlock the four successes relating to the player’s final choice. They will be able to take the opportunity to find all the collectibles in the game, each of which makes its own contribution to the 1000G.
Tested on Xbox Series X (Optimized)
