Not sure if this game is cute or spooky | Children of Silentown - Review

There's a certain cuteness in this game; the playful nature of the children, the slice of life presentation, and the lighthearted puzzling elements. At the same time, Children of Silentown is spooky and creepy; from the Tim Burton-esque art style with big white creepy eyes, to the foreboding nature of the story with nightmares and monsters.

Silentown is 'a quiet place', a town deep in a forest inhabited by monsters. People can only go out during daylight, loud noises are forbidden, and there are occasional disappearances usually attributed to the monsters. This has become the norm. Recently, disappearances are becoming more frequent, and it’s up to our character, one of the children named Lucy, to courageously investigate.

Most of the gameplay elements are composed of puzzling solving, doing mini-games, and roaming around collecting items and clues. The main highlight of the gameplay being the song mechanics. Lucy likes to sing a lot. As you play the game, you will learn musical notes, which will accumulate and form songs. Lucy can use them to manipulate and reveal the history of the world and characters around you.

Of course, with a game mechanic that revolves around singing, It’s not surprising that Children of Silentown also features a fitting masterful soundtrack to go with it. Somber, emotional, lighthearted at times. A bit of a disappointment though, as the game is not fully voice acted. There is an impressive voice narration at the start, but that’s about it. You have to read the rest of the dialogue between characters.

Children of Silentown keeps it fresh during its roughly above average ten hour gameplay, evenly divided into five chapters. Puzzle variety is adequately diverse and logical.

The puzzle elements are divided into two core types: the environmental puzzles, solvable by a series of interactions and item uses; and the more mechanical “in your screen” puzzles, which are brought forth and go in tandem with the song / note mechanics. A nice balance between the two is maintained to keep it from being monotonous and boring.

All of these are driven by an interesting but cliche narrative that builds up rather well and gets more and more interesting up to the end — Especially the latter half of the story where things get more exciting. The environments becoming more mystical, the gameplay becoming more dynamic, and the mystery finally unraveled to the player. And if that’s not enough, Children of Silentown features four different endings depending on your playthrough.

And finally, a point and click game that has proper gamepad support, and they completely nailed it! Children of Silentown has a whole new control scheme specifically made for gamepads and I liked it better than traditional mouse and keyboard controls. You no longer have to select and move using the mouse pointer, you just control Lucy directly using the left analog stick and interact with objects using the face buttons like a modern game would do. Something that all point-and-click game developers should aspire to do.

Children of Silentown is a fun point-and-click game that is unexpectedly long but still manages to keep itself fresh throughout the journey across all concerned departments; story, gameplay, and soundtrack. A well recommended title especially with its proper gamepad control implementation.