Maravilhoso

For the most part a pretty good point and click adventure but with som heavy flaws. It's not really a horror game, more of a fairytale with some light spooky atmosphere. I liked the vibe and mood of the game and the artstyle is pretty great.

The inventory puzzles are alright, and the songs you have are a neat feature that I wished they expanded on some more. There are also three recuring puzzles that are more anoying than anything else (especially the cogwheel one). I really don't see what they add to the gameplay or storyline, having one of them is fine, but a dozen? The last chapter is also where it feels that the game didn't really know what to do with it, the main puzzle is a bit nonsensical.

The endings are good, but it's a bit anoying that you need to replay the entire chapter to get there. I really wish games would stop with just one save file and no manual saves, there is literaly no reason to do so, other than annoy customers. I don't exactly feel like replaying the worst chapter three more times, so I just watched them on youtube.

Beautiful little point & click puzzle game, I absolutely love the art style. Good narration, but the music gets a little tedious (I turned it off and listened to something else). The puzzles are fun at first, but get repetitive. The first ending was kind of a let down, I didn't get the answers I was looking for, so its definitely worth checking out the other endings. The biggest problem is, if you miss an achievement, you cannot simply replay a certain chapter, you have to do an entirely new play through (except for the endings, you can just play the final chapter). It's not a long game, so if you can, buy it on sale.

Somewhere out there is a person who loves 6/10 point and click puzzle games and hasn't read anything by Lois Lowry. This game is going to blow their mind. Everyone else is going to find some fairly on-the-nose motifs, some pixel hunts for overly fiddly puzzles, and an abysmally slow walk speed. If you like the aesthetic it'll carry you for the 6 hour runtime but this is definitely a game aiming for its comfort zone.

Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaal7Z5SV7s

Dark, mysterious, emotional, and thought-provoking, Children of Silentown is a memorable hand-drawn, puzzle-heavy point-and-click adventure game that took its sweet time in winning me over, but win me over it ultimately did.

STORY

You are Lucy. A 12-year-old girl who loves playing music with her mother, doing hoodrat stuff with her friends, and getting a good night’s sleep. Too bad you'll never get the latter, as you happen to be plagued by chronic, monster-fueled nightmares... but who could blame you? Your town is surrounded by them, and they keep kidnapping those you hold dear (rude).

Discouraged from investigating and kept in the dark by adults admittedly correctly fearing for your safety, you nevertheless decide to take matters into your own hands and brave the ominous forest beyond Silentown’s walls. Oh, but not before completing your long list of boring chores and doing whatever it is 12-year-old girls do (race frogs and hedgehogs, apparently).

After that painfully slow start, Children of Silentown’s patient and peculiar plot will gradually grow into something rather fascinating, and I’m still thinking about it. Is it all a big metaphor for life under authoritarian rule? Or perhaps something less literal—a psychological commentary on fear itself, perhaps? Whatever it is, I consider both the game’s plot and its well-written, realistic characters a strength, though the stiff text-based dialogue is occasionally a chore to click through.

GAMEPLAY & CONTENT

Speaking of chores, let’s talk mechanics. Children of Silentown is inspired by classic point-and-click adventure games, meaning the majority of your time will be spent combing your cursor over the screen in the hopes of stumbling upon some obscure little item or solution you understandably missed the first few dozen times. It doesn’t help that you’re often given little to no guidance from Lucy, NPCs, or the game’s simple UI on what it is exactly it is you need to do to advance the game’s lukewarm objectives—and so, your first few hours as Lucy will amount to tracking down grocery ingredients, playing hide and seek, and just begging the game to do something (which it very much eventually does).

Luckily, Lucy breaks up the early game monotony with music, as her songs (which you slowly unlock note-by-note) can reveal one’s innermost thoughts, the past, or even that which isn't there. These revelations lead to puzzles of all sort: mend broken minds by stitching together old memories; manipulate tiles to guide light home and away from dark thoughts; divert water to power ancient shrines; pull vines to pepper spray a bloodthirsty furry!

And if that last one is any indication, the puzzles and game world get more interesting as the game goes on, and I consider both of them strengths.

So, while I’m not and never have been crazy about the almost intentionally annoying old school adventure game paradigms that Children of Silentown replicates, I think fans of the genre will feel right at home here. To everyone else, my advice is to (and I’ll probably get virtually crucified for saying this) find a playthrough video, and only resort to using it when you’ve reached your breaking point. Because I'd hate for someone to give up on this game before its fascinating second half.

STYLE

Children of Silentown’s developer, Elf Games, is no stranger to creating eye-catching art, and Silentown is no exception: hand-painted backgrounds and cute if unsettling character designs add to the world’s charm and mystery alike, and the game’s handful of chapters are broken up by occasionally breathtaking cutscenes. However, things often fade to black to cover up for missing animations, and what we do get here is pretty jumpy and immersion-killing. The soundtrack, meanwhile, is beautiful if a tad repetitive early on. It's also occasionally absent—we aren’t treated to, for example, the duets between Lucy and her mother, and Lucy will often remark on hearing songs in the distance that we never do. But these problems are insignificant when juxtaposed with the game’s disappointing sound design. Many effects here stand out as clunky at best and jarring at worst, though a handful of effective atmospheric horror sequences save this micrometric from a “1.”

CONCLUSION

Children of Silentown launches for most platforms on January 11th and should net you 5 to 8 hours of playtime, more if you feel like seeing all three (four?) endings. I think this game presents decent value at $20, as its faults are largely redeemed by an engaging story and memorable art style. I’m giving it an aggregate MEGA score of 3.31/5 (full scoring breakdown available in video format) and hope everyone’s new year is off to a stellar start. This is Scope and thanks for reading!

Not the horror game I had expected. The story feels more like a grim fairytale. While simple, it tells the tale of following your inner voice, even when those around you are against it. You could easily narrate this game's plot to your kids before bedtime.

I really wanted to like this and I mostly did. But at least 40 percent of this game is filled with singing options that lead to mazes. gear puzzles and light puzzles that are so annoying. I would have really preferred the game was filled with environmental point and click stuff but those singing puzzles just ruined the game for me. The ending is kind of ambiguous which I don't mind but after creating a grounded atmosphere for most of the game, having the metaphysical stuff thrown at you at the end after solving those stupid puzzles over and over just got to me.

I played the demo when it was first released and really enjoyed it! Once I got the full game, however, the story started to lose its magic. The puzzles became repetitive, the plot of the game became too symbolic in a way that felt vague, and I lost interest in Lucy's journey. The art style is great and I wish the story had more depth to it cause I was really looking forward to this game. Ultimately, I was disappointed

Hush little baby, don't say a word,
Or monsters gonna come and take you, girl.


쉿

Children of Silentown

This game is about a town that's surrounded by a forest filled with monsters. The people in Silentown live by a bunch of rules to try and make sure they don't get taken by the monsters. You play as Lucy, a child who is curious and has questions about the forest and the monsters. When her mom goes missing she decides to take action!

The thing that instantly drew me to this game was the art style. It's so pretty and slightly creepy! I love it! It reminds me of Tim Burton and Don't Starve. The amount of care and development that came with it really shows.
The game has some puzzle elements in it. Some were a bit more tricky than others but overall they weren't extremely difficult at all.

Achievement wise:
The game is pretty easy to get 100%.
It requires a few playthroughs due to the fact that there are 4 different endings.
Maybe some of the stickers and secret notes need a bit more searching.

My dislikes:
I really only have one dislike which is the way the monsters are drawn.
All the people and the environment all fit perfectly together. Like everything is supposed to be there. And then there are the monsters who feel like they got lack of attention. Maybe this is on purpose?

I give this game a 9/10
I loved this game so much and enjoyed every bit of every playthrough!