Let me start my review by saying this is by far the worst gaming experience i had in 2021 and possibly in years
i just wasted 4.6h trying to play the damn thing and it kept hitting me with one breaking bug after the other, i really tried to fight through it but this is just not fun for me, and i might as well just play something that's actually enjoyable
and the worst part is, the devs seems to be well aware of those bugs ever since 2017, and yet they never bothered to actually fix them..
the game itself is okay at best, full of excessive backtracking to items i already seen and tried to interact with like 15-30 mins ago, and some of the voice acting is pretty bad, i also found myself wondering aimlessly more than once not knowing if i faced yet another bug that halted my progress or if i just couldn't find the obscure things the devs expect me to interact with, i really wished the game told me what my current objective was, it would've saved me so much time
all in all i would've forgiven most its flaws if not for the bugs, i tried all the possible "workarounds" i could find online to no avail, so now i'm left with a game i can never finish, and for that i give it a 2/10

Empathy is a first person adventure game where you attempt to “fix” the world that has been ravaged by a virus. You roam a surreal world that has been abandoned and find items that provide glimpses into the memories (momentos) of its former inhabitants.

Pros:
Great graphics
A mystery unfold as you play the game
Well optimized
The developers are actively updating and answering questions
A few puzzles
Voice acting is good

Cons:
A few overlapping textures (most notifiable in the cliff side settlement)
The narrator talks a little to much
A fair amount of walking back and forth

My initial impression, at the start of the game, was the buildings seem to be floating in the clouds. It reminded me of Columbia (Bioshock Infinite), except not quite as dreary and no one was shooting at me. In fact, there are no people in this game, just the items they left behind for you to discover. Most of this game involves exploring each area collecting items, momentos, and documents, then piecing everything together to form another part of the story. Then you're off to find the next group. Basically, this game is a walking simulator with a few puzzles thrown in for good measure.

All of the issues I had with this game where very minor. For example, the narrator will chime in on something, which is okay except if you're trying to activate a momento, you'll have to wait until he's finished speaking before activating the next one, and sometimes there are three or four momentos in the same area.

One of the best things about this game is that the developers are actively involved with the game, answering questions, fixing bugs, and updating... unlike Ether One where the developers abandoned their game and left us with a broken mess.

At the time of this review, Empathy was selling for $19.99. That price is just about right. My first play through took me about 8 to 10 hours plus another 5 hours to obtain all of the achievements, so it's worth it.

A nice (though I wouldn't exactly say "great") story with an intriguing setting. Unfortunately, the game itself has a lot of flaws, and I don't feel like it was worth the time and money.

The story is given entirely via text documents and "mementos". The latter are random objects which you have to find in the world (by using a helpful radar which leads you to everything story-related) and click (and, sometimes, solve a simple boring puzzle) to hear one or two lines of monologue from some story character. There's a lot of these characters, but basically none of them is developed enough to make the player actually care about him/her. Most character stories are also unfinished - I feel like they were just thrown in to make an illusion of a "bigger picture" (and give the player something to collect, of course). Well, it didn't really work for me. The beautiful world was practically the only thing that kept me going. There are a few episodes where you need to find some items and use them on something, but it's very basic (and the game makes sure to highlight the places where you need to put something). The story, as I said, was nice enough, but it didn't have any real surprises - almost everything was clear after the first act, and there were already slight hints about the rest. The endgame simply puts everything you already knew together and briefly fills the gaps. The ending itself is... well, just as bland as the rest.

For an "almost open-world" game, exploration is pretty bad too. Sure, you have enough space to walk around and check around every corner. The problem is - most corners don't have anything around them. And when you do find something, it's just another memento which "rewards" you with a line of boring monologue you couldn't care less about. Think Gone Home on steroids: more space, vast outdoor locations, but nothing conceptually different (except infinitely better story). If you loved Gone Home, this might just be the game for you. Alas, I didn't.

Oh, and there's also the backtracking. Don't get me wrong here - I actually like games which support meaningful backtracking: the kind when the game acknowledges and rewards players which intentionally come back to investigate something they've just learned or realized, or maybe use something they didn't have before. Unfortunately, Empathy's backtracking is the worst kind of meaningless. You can search the whole location, find a lot of inactive (seemingly decorative) objects and decide you are done here - then, once you get back to finishing another story task, your radar suddenly comes alive with a half-dozen markers, leading to these very same items you've already found (but now you can interact with them). So, not only is exploration weak by itself - the game design actively discourages it.

The fact that most of the characters have Russian names and "matching" voices doesn't help either. Yep, we native speakers are long-time used to faux-Russian accents done by amateur Americans who sound like they've never heard an actual Russian speak. But to endure this torture for the whole duration of a game with several dozen invisible characters who can't even pronounce each other's (and occasionally their own) names?! That was the hardest part. Especially when the main developer's name looks like he should at the very least know better than to name a town "Chernosk" without a "v". Sure, that one's at least fixed in the Russian localization, but who cares if there are no Russian voices? Next time, hire a dozen Russian students to voice it if an authentic atmosphere is what you are looking for...

Overall - not a horrible game, it has its charms (mostly visual), but it's definitely not something I would recommend. There are better "walksims" out there.

P.S. On the bright side, the developer is active on the forums and very eager to quickly solve any issue you might have.

This game is very similar to Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. If you have played that game and liked it, you will probably like this one. Basically a walking simulator with a small amount of interaction with objects in it. The scenery is different and strange, the music and background sounds seem approppriate. If you want action and romance, give it a pass. If you want to pass the time in an interesting environment, give it a try.

Empathy: Path of Whispers was a game that came across the ethereal surface of my existential desk quite by chance. Although I had never heard of the game previous to receiving a copy from the generous souls at Iceberg Interactive, I do love a good walking simulator, and so was quite stoked when presented with the opportunity to play and review this game. The product page description on Steam reads as follows:

Originally posted by author:

Empathy: Path of Whispers is an atmospheric and story-driven adventure game where you explore a seemingly abandoned world through the emotions and memories of the people who once inhabited it, trying to restore the world’s lost balance by journeying through its past.

What I found was an engaging and quite lengthy adventure (at least lengthy for a walking simulator) which took me through quite a different take on a post apocalyptic world. It took me right at about 9 hours to complete with a fair amount of wandering. So, with that said, let’s dive into the meat of this review.


The story in Empathy: Path of Whispers is one that develops as you progress. You play as a child, awake and alone in a world where all other people are gone. The world itself is an idyllic and yet completely bizarre place. The narrator, who is heard but never seen, guides you on a path to attempt to restore the world and humanity to its pre-apocalyptic state.

Throughout Empathy: Path of Whispers, you will encounter sub-plots via notes and memories that reveal much of the fear and angst surrounding the inception of the apocalypse and humanity’s attempt to avoid its inevitable demise. Each distinct area in the game has its own primary story woven immaculately into the fold of the overall plot.

During your travels, you really really get to know some of the people whose memories you are afforded the opportunity to share, and the writing in this game does an amazing job of really bringing you close to a lot of people who are not even alive any longer and who you only come to know via their thoughts and impressions of the world as it was coming to an end.

Additionally, the actual premise behind the demise of humanity was nothing short of brilliant. This was an amazingly well thought out and presented glimpse into a fresh and new variation of the world we know as it is dying or coming to an inglorious end. Evocative through the end, Empathy: Path of Whispers will capture your imagination and not let go.

10 out of 10


Gameplay in Empathy: Path of Whispers has all the standards of a walking simulator: Exploration, interaction, and plenty of reading. However, thanks to a device you are given (a scanner) at the beginning of the game, you can find the impressions of a world left behind and attune your device to these impressions, revealing actual objects, memoirs, etc…and these will be used to progress the story and unlock the next areas of the game. This was a pretty imaginative and ingenious way to get the player fully invested in the game and allows a level of interaction previously unseen in this genre of gaming.

There is quite a bit of backtracking as one set of memories unlocks other sets. However, there isn’t any backtracking from one game area to the next. Once you have moved on from a game area, you won’t be going back. As such, it behooves you to really be thorough in your exploration, especially if you are an achievement hunter. After 9 hours, I still missed a small amount of notes and memories needed for the 100%

I experienced no actual issues while playing this game at all. It handled perfectly.

9.5 out of 10


Empathy: Path of Whispers utilizes the Unreal Engine, which is pretty common for this genre of gaming. As such, if you have played any walking simulators previously, you will have a good idea as to what you can expect graphically. However, when you look at the creative direction in this game compared to its contemporaries, you really get an appreciation for the level of detail put into this game and the definite desire to create a world that people have’t experienced before, and this was a complete success in my opinion. This is a beautiful game with plenty of jaw dropping vistas and a unique presentation that will again capture your imagination and never let go.

9.5 out of 10


There are some nice background sounds and music in Empathy: Path of Whispers. Things sound the way they should and the way they are incorporated into the game really elevates the atmosphere of the world as you wander about.

However, it is the voice acting that I found truly compelling. as you listen to the memories of now dead people and hear the things they were going through, not only as they tried to find normalcy in a world gone wrong, but also as their fear was mounting and different factions were forming. The variety of actors and attitudes used to define each of the many characters in the game was pretty phenomenal.

Special mention goes to the narrator, who really was able to find a nice balance between seriousness and a sardonic humor that was perfect for the story being presented.

9 out of 10


Empathy: Path of Whispers immediately enters the top tier of walking simulators I have had the pleasure of playing through. The story might be the most interesting one I have encountered in the genre, the set pieces were completely unique and awesome, and the presentation of this post apocalyptic world was fresh and new. An innovative addition to the gameplay typical of this genre really just elevated this games status even further. After all that, the game still managed to lighten the mood a little through witty dialogue courtesy of the narrator as well as a comical ending post credits.

This game is amazing. It's a narrative walking simulator with some puzzle elements like many others however this one stands out from the rest, the game favours players who like to explore and get the most out of the game instead of following a small linear path as you are set free in an area to explore and find secrets to help unravel the story.

Graphics are hit and miss, some areas look really good and some don't. The game ran very smooth throughout on 4k ultra. Voice acting was excellent, same with the soundtrack although it did pop in and out randomly as you walk in and out of rooms.

The puzzles were very easy for the most part but the occasional 2 or 3 in each area were extremely hard. I was stuck looking for one object in the first area for about 20 minutes which might have just been stupidity on my part.

I completed the game in 4.5 hours having explored every corner of the game, making sure I got every note and hidden secret I could find.

I would recommend this game to anyone looking for an experience like Dear Esther or What Remains Of Edith Finch but with more interaction.

I usually love walking simulator-like adventure games, but this was a bizarre trip. It starts out very strong in terms of the setting, the beginning of the plot, the suspense and the feeling that something horrible has happened to the world. Greeted and guided by an anonymous voice, the player - another anonymous character - sets out on a journey to collect the pieces of the story and try to explain what went down. It's so spooky I can't think of many cooler plots. So you start collecting all those documents, memorabilia left by the unfortunate citizens, their belongings scattered all around the place. Sometimes you need to use some kinda scanner to extract that information. Overall the concept is easy to grasp and not tiring. Problems start to happen though when you pick everything up and all of a sudden you're required to collect some more things for a second iteration - this means lots and lots of tedious backtracking. It's ridiculous how you come across a personal pendant the first time and you just know it's got a story to tell, but you can't do nothing about it because it's not the time yet. Come back when you've traveled to the other end of the map, it'll maybe have activated by then.

But it's not the worst part - the worst part is the stuff you collect is supposed to tell a story by telling many smaller stories about various characters, but just as you start figuring them out, they stop and are replaced by stories of some totally new characters. Many times I was just beginning to really get into what happened to some particular person only for their story to end abruptly and never be picked up again. Because of this, the general picture that those little bits should've pieced together was all over the place. I could barely keep track of what was happening, the stories started to make zero sense, and in the end the narrator and I did something which should have... I dunno, saved the world? Made the Earth a happy place again? And did it work?..

I honestly couldn't tell because almost nothing made sense. After you read all the stuff and put these pieces together, it's like they're all from different puzzle sets. The questions I had in the beginning were almost all left unanswered. I didn't doubt for a second that that picture looked amazing in the eyes of the game writers cause you can feel the game is deep, but there's just so much open to interpretation that when I finished the six-hour campaign, the first thing I thought was "what the f*ck did I just play". And to be fair, some might really dig it, but I got nowhere close to that.

This was quite terrible. One of the worst walking simulators I have played. I love indie games but I sadly know that sometimes even if the reviews are 'mostly positive', I will not enjoy the game. I am open to the risk and this time I got unlucky.

The game fails pretty much at everything. There were a couple locations which were nice, but there are many things that kill this game:

- narration (voice acting is actually good for the most part)
- backtracking (why do I have to walk 2 km backwards to analyze an object which I had already found and noticed, and tried to interact with, one hour before?)
- technical issues (20fps in act 3, really?)
- bad graphics
- uninteresting plot, poorly explained in the end
- gameplay mechanics: repetitive, not challenging

I am of the idea that you have to at least have one big good thing. Dear Esther was basically hours of doing nothing and walking at snail speed. But the map was great, visuals as well, and the story was beautiful. That allowed the game to completely ignore puzzles, inventory, and other things, because the story and locations alone were able to keep the game interesting.

This was just a mix of badly executed game ideas, patched up together, ruined by an even worse practical use of the UE4.

I really liked this game! It was one of the most enjoyable exploration, walking sim games I have played in a while. The game world was gorgeous and I thought the voice acting was wonderful.

This game has 5 acts in different settings so I didn't get bored running around the same scenes. Yes, there is backtracking, but it is a function of the game to convey the story. You wander the level the first time to get your bearings and pick up clues and then as you progress different things open in places you visited before - but in exchange you get another piece of the story.

It took me a while to figure out what was going on storywise, but then I just relaxed and listened and it all started to fit together. I quite enjoyed the mystery and I stopped for the messages to make sure I paid attention and to absorb the scenes and that broke up the the constant moving for me.

I really liked the auto save on this. I haven't seen auto save work so frequently. Nice feature! I also liked the scanner that helps you locate objects, though I only used when I had to. I preferred to wander and find as much as I could without it. There is a wave matching part of the scanner that activates items (you will use it a LOT) but it seemed to me to get much easier as the game went on and was simply a matter of three tweaks and a match to keep going.

Yes, I played it slow, but even without my lagging I think game length was well worth the price.

Thanks, devs, for a captivating story in a beautiful world gone awry. I would love to see more games from these guys.

"Empathy: Path of Whispers" is an exploration game with a few minimalistic puzzles thrown in, and a unique narrative style. You roam a surreal world that has been abandoned after a terrible catastrophe, and find items that provide glimpses into the memories of its former inhabitants.

The narrative style is pretty unique for a game. Do you remember movies like "Short Cuts" or "Southland Tales", and how they track a large number of characters and their respective plots, which keep converging and drifting apart repeatedly? Empathy tries to do something similar in a game. While you explore the lifeless world, you keep finding memories from the time when the apocalypse was still ongoing, coming from more than 20 very different people. Most of these memories are quite short (often just 2-3 sentences in a voice-over, or a short part of a conversation), and there aren't a lot of them, but they are well written and succeed in forming a diverse mosaic of completely different reactions to the events.

While I liked this style a lot, I should also mention that it renders the story considerably less accessible than more traditional formats. The large number of actors will probably confuse you, and I strongly recommend to switch subtitles on, so that you can always see who's talking when a new voice-over comes in. Further complication arises from the fact that the memories aren't necessarily in a chronological order. At the beginning of the game, you also have no idea what's going on, so some of the memories may refer to events that you won't understand until later.

The game automatically keeps track of discovered memories in a journal, which helps in sorting things out. Personally I enjoyed this "detective work", and I felt that it gave me a much bigger and more varied picture of human behavior than a more traditional story could have provided. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I started a second playthrough immediately after the first one, because the beginning of the game becomes much clearer when you already know the rest of it. I also found the story itself quite original, and liked its philosophical implications.

However, the game will probably be less enjoyable if you aren't in the mood to follow and understand 20+ different characters based on semi-random memory snippets. If you expect the story to be served to you, if you just rush through, or if you don't take enough time to look for "optional" memories, then the story may very well feel like a confusing mess. Which it actually isn't, but it takes effort to unravel it. Note that there is no in-game reward for doing so either - your reward is the feeling of a deeper understanding of the characters and their stories.

I guess in order to like Empathy, you probably need ... empathy. ;) You need to genuinely enjoy unraveling stories about the human condition, and find it rewarding to just understand a given (fictional) person a bit better. If you _do_ fall into that target group. then Empathy can provide an amazing experience that really makes it stand out from similar games.

I found most other aspects of the game much less important than the story, but I'll address them quickly for completion's sake:

• Puzzles are minimal and mostly very easy, most revolve around finding objects at fairly obvious places. One particular puzzle type is repeated dozens of times and can easily become annoying, but only takes 3 seconds each time.
  
• Graphics are often low-fidelity, the game mostly looks as if it was 10 years old already. There's a lot of painfully obvious copy-pasting in the maps. The game partly makes up for that with some truly spectacular, unique views though.
  
• Background music is excellent: subtle and melancholic, it carries the mood of the game perfectly without ever pushing into the foreground.
  
• Voice-overs are a bit hit-and-miss, but they get their job done and convey the emotions appropriately. Prepare for lots of overdone accents though.
  
• The developer has been very responsive and implemented several requested features since release.Some issues remain (one bug with game not realizing a correct puzzle solution seems to be particulaly troublesome), but I am confident that these still remaining issues will be addressed in the future.

I suppose one could say that this game is "flawed, but also perfect", depending on what you focus on. Kudos to you if know where that quote is from. ;)