Whispering Willows is an adventure in archaeology with a supernatural perk. It lets you speak to dead people who once owned the artifacts you discover. It twists the haunted house investigation premise by giving its heroine transformational powers. The ability to astral project through the use of an amulet is the basic mechanic by which puzzles are solved. This adequately serves both the narrative and the gameplay, the latter comprising some of the most simplistic and easy exploration puzzles in recent memory. This is a minimal detriment to the game overall, which is well-supported with touching themes of regret, lost love, and one’s spiritual connection to nature.
The story keeps you invested because you want to know what happened to Elena’s father. It also adds encounters with some devilish creatures that send your heart racing.
While the controls are good, there are some frustrating moments when climbing up stairs. Sometimes I went further than I wanted or didn’t climb up the stairs to escape a pursuing foe. The great thing is that these moments are few and far between.
Whispering Willows has a beautiful art style, hand drawn and vibrant in some cases, it sets the tone of where you are in the mansion but I felt the storyboard cutscenes could have received more love. In terms of the soundtrack, it is full of well-timed eerie noises that reside around a mansion that is haunted by its ghostly occupants. The floor creaks and the odd weird sound effect drifts in that will make Elena shudder with fear.
The game is really atmospheric, great to look at and features a unique and fun astral projection mechanic, but I felt it did not use this to its full potential. Puzzles were too easy to solve and didn’t have enough variety to them. The astral projection wasn’t used enough to make me feel satisfied with its inclusion in the game. Many puzzles felt similar and the repetition became tedious after a while.
You can complete the game in a little over two hours, the story also fell short of my expectations and while the collectibles made for an interesting read, I felt that they needed to be more integrated into the storyline–you don’t have to find or read any of them, which left the story full of gaps. If you like collecting stuff as much as I do then I urge you to collect them all. Plus, doing so will mean that you will enjoy the story to its fullest! The collectibles add a lot of replayability to the experience.
Overall, Whispering Willows is a great casual game between those heavy hitters this month like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and Mad Max. It’s fun in small doses and I can’t stress how important it is for you to collect the writings and read them. It adds another dimension to the game and makes it more interesting. Nowadays we gamers are used to experiences we power through so this might be frustrating for some.
If I hadn’t gone back for the collectibles I would’ve given this game a 5/10 but the depth that the reading adds is extraordinary. Combine that with the fun, simple puzzles, I would have to increase that score to 7/10. It’s a really good game that I would definitely recommend when you want to play something casually and relax.
Nick was a community contributor to ICXM, writing 2 articles in 2015 covering game reviews, and Xbox news. ICXM operated as an independent Xbox and Windows gaming outlet through the Xbox One’s first full year of post-launch coverage, including the early days of Backwards Compatibility and Windows 10 gaming, drawing from a rotating bench of editorial volunteers. They post on X as @XxSNIPERxSWAYxX.