How old is Elena?

[Lion-Oh-Day]

Darby calls her a little girl, but she seems older than Sky Flower. Some of her Dairy entries seem very.... childish? Though her sprite work make me think she's in her early/middle teens.

So does anyone know if we have a confirmed age?

[LigH]

No official statement from me, only a guess as well; but she appears to have some degree of maturity and self-confidence already, and her artwork reminds of the "puberty rebel years" with a beginning change of life goals and body development, causing some insecurity to be hidden by obviously casual clothes. Your guessed age seems to be well founded.

[Homecrust]

Hey there!

The writer of Whispering Willows here.

So glad you guys have taken such a keen interest in Elena! Your guesses are pretty spot on. When writing the character, I envisioned her as being about 13 years of age. I wanted to make a character that was antithetical to the white male characters that were predominant in games at that time (and still are, frankly). We indie developers really love it when our fans take such awesome absorption into our work and we LOVE being able to answer questions like these that we didn't directly include in the game.

-Kyle Holmquist

[Lion-Oh-Day]

Originally posted by Homecrust:

Hey there!

The writer of Whispering Willows here.

So glad you guys have taken such a keen interest in Elena! Your guesses are pretty spot on. When writing the character, I envisioned her as being about 13 years of age. I wanted to make a character that was antithetical to the white male characters that were predominant in games at that time (and still are, frankly). We indie developers really love it when our fans take such awesome absorption into our work and we LOVE being able to answer questions like these that we didn't directly include in the game.

-Kyle Holmquist

Thank you for the response Kyle.

I think it was best to not state her age, it would have felt stilted considering the game lacks much dialouge to begin with. May I ask another question?

In the game her father leaves notes which imply that he has been a grounds keeper there for sometime. Since he refrences honing his spiritual power and teaching Elena. However if that's true then why is the place in such disaray? I mean there's a skeleton in the green house. ( Don't think it was called that but still ) From the intro I assumed her father had just started working at the old mansion and had immediately gone missing. Not to mention the grounds keeper that had worked there for 30 years.
Maybe I am missing some clue or explanation in game, though I believe I've found every note.

Oh and to address the topic of white men, while I'll agree that Triple A games had a long stint of the main characters being white guys, I think this is dieing down now adays. I think it was an over all lack of imagination of all triple A developers ( Since most of said games also feature brown shooting game play to boot ).
Indie games seem to have a lot more variety as well. In fact since the start of this year I haven't beaten ( or played ) any game that has a white guy as the main character, except for one.

Thank you for your time and Reply.

[Rabid Dentist]

young enough to still be a ♥♥♥♥♥ about her missing father, but old enough to be brave enough to solve puzzles while risking getting her soul eaten for a midnight snack by a daemon

[Homecrust]

So happy to provide a response!

In response to your second question, her father had been working there for a few months or so when he'd gone missing. He hadn't managed to get through the massive amounts of restoration the grounds would need, especially with how caught up he was in all the spiritual energy that abounds in the place. I toyed around with the idea of the Mansion passing hands to various owners, but in the end preferred to leave it up to the imagination of the players as far as what exactly the past of Willows Mansion was. I, of course, have my own ideas that I would love to explore in the future as far as the interim period between the death of Fleur LeRue and the time that Elena's father comes to work at the Mansion. We'll have to see what the Future for Whispering Willows holds. It was an amazing project to work on, and I'd be thrilled to to do something else that builds upon and improves the original game.

[Lion-Oh-Day]

Originally posted by Homecrust:

Thank you so much for your responses they have answerd a lot of my questions. Always nice to see devs willing to communicate with the community.

[Joshua Deamhan]

lol I was thinking 13 years old too and I was right