WHISPERS OF A MACHINE review - Riveting
(Reviewed by Melody Werner)
Whispers of a Machine is a 2019 point & click developed by Clifftop Games and Faravid Interactive. Published by Raw Fury and starring Ivy Dupler, it follows a special agent called into the small town of Nordsund to investigate a double murder. It follows Clifftop's other point & click published by Raw Fury: Kathy Rain: A Detective Is Born from 2016. I first heard of Clifftop by ACG's review of Kathy Rain, so I was looking forward to this when I saw it announced (though I have yet to play KR:ADIS myself). A little while after covering it on my subreddit, I saw that it had also been published on Android so I picked it up. After a few days, I finished it and was immensely satisfied with my experiences. Without further ado, lemme tell you why this is a cracking P&C.
Modern adventure games of WoaM's strata (such as those released by the talented folks at Wadjet Eye) typically conform to a "hand drawn backgrounds, pixel art characters" format, and Whispers is no different. The good news is, Whispers sticks the landing with some great backdrops and solid pixel artistry. There's the UI, which is sleekly designed and unobtrusive, with some options to customize it to your liking (albeit not particularly in depth options to settle on your perfect user interface). Sometimes I did find the game had problems with directing the character to where I'd tapped, though your mileage will vary. The character also just generally moves like molasses, which can be a minor pain when traversing from one side of Nordsund to the other. Along with the pixel art and hand drawn backdrops, you have the character portraits, which are done in a more painterly style and look great as well. All of these disparate art styles could potentially lend to a jarring experience, but the facts that this format is a) commonplace enough and b) bound together by a cohesive design, keeps things chugging along smoothly. What doesn't always chug along so smoothly, unfortunately, are the main character animations while walking. There are times where she will hitch momentarily, in certain parts of the terrain such as staircases, on a reliable basis. While by no means a dealbreaker--and I am no immersion hawk, so it doesn't bother me too much--it happens with enough frequency that it does threaten to mildly annoy once you notice it. What fares far better, however, is the music, which would be an understatement to term as excellent. It actually reminds me of The Witcher 3's tunes, which is always a good thing to have my brain thinking of.
Point & click adventures have been associated, since their inception and subsequent heyday, with what we call "moon logic"--absurd solutions to problems that no one would think of unless they were in the room when the developers were designing those puzzles. Now, I found myself periodically consulting the walkthrough during my time with Whispers--but for what it's worth--I don't think that WoaM suffers so much from moon logic. All of the puzzles and whatnot can be solved just by thinking things out, the walkthrough is more of a "So, I see you're an impatient git," than a necessity borne of bizarre puzzle design. Every time I saw the next step in the walkthrough, I immediately understood that I would've figured it out if I'd remembered every tool in my cachet and kept puzzling things out. What's cool about Whispers, is how it really makes you feel like a detective through the mechanics. You'll interrogate civilians, analyze footprints, find murder weapons, and all of it blends nicely into the written story in the way a video game ought to. Another neat thing worth mentioning is the tightly crafted world design. It's very intuitive; you never have to go through any rigmarole or labyrinths just to get one small yet integral item on one side of the map. Once you go through unlocking an area, it usually connects right to a more easily accessible part of Nordsund.
Being an adventure game, proper good writing is imperative. You could have the glossiest point & click on the market with the most intuitive puzzles, but if your characters are uninteresting, if your story is asinine, if your dialogue is tawdry, then all that polish will be for naught. Thankfully, Whispers is never brought down because of any of that. Its story is a fascinating, sometimes genuinely touching or profound, delve into automation and artificial intelligence. But not for worse, mind you, as it's the unraveling of a really compelling tangle of different factions and ideologies, all of which are given a due fleshing out. I'm always willing to kill for good mysteries, and Whispers is no doubt one of those. When you've finally solved its core enigma, it's a content feeling of witnessing a deftly crafted sleuth 'em up. But plots are different from stories, as we are often told in the writing community by other writers, and so WoaM's plot fares differently to its more central tale. Oh, and a big plus is that there are 3 alternate endings, which give you plenty of reason to replay Whispers, if that's your bag. With all of that in mind, I can see people getting plenty of worthwhile hours out of this game. WoaM is bolstered by its setting--a post-apocalyptic world where society has picked up the pieces to rebuild anew, and all attempts to recreate an artificial intelligence are outlawed.
Then there are the characters. While I can't say that there's some uniform transcendence of archetypes that'll wow you and overwhelm the senses, there are a ton of well-rendered, charming characters who are interesting to try and understand the motivations and secrets of as you're cracking the case. While the killer can be predicted along the way, there are enough other interesting characters and red herrings to throw you off course. Vera, the main character, has her personality defined by how you choose to act in conversations or how you choose to solve your quandaries. As you make decisions, you will gain new cybernetic powers each morning, and they are tailored to your personality, giving an additional reason to go through multiple playthroughs as the way you solve certain puzzles will change dramatically depending on your augs. But all these characters are nothing without their talented voice actors, who bring so much to this production. Dupler is a capable lead, her performance is charming and she has a great sense of range. Other than Ivy, Andy Mack provides what is easily my favorite performance for what will be a clear fan favorite character among those who play WoaM, Valter (and his equally enjoyable puppet, Nisse). He's endlessly charismatic, and like the rest of these talented actors, had me asking every question I could--even where unnecessary to the plot--just to hear what they'd say. And they're given a lot of great stuff to say, thanks to some impeccable dialogue. What surprised me most, though, was how gut-bustingly funny it was from time to time. Valter/Nisse and the town doctor, Dr. Persson (played by Al Pagano), have the most reliably amusing dialogue/vocal performances, and it's clear that the writers knew this. Fortunately, though, they never feel the need to pat themselves on the back for being geniuses like some writers do when they think they've got this joke that'll do gangbusters but it falls flat.
Whispers of a Machine is by no means a transformative experience, but what it does, it does ably. And, if nothing else, it's got my eyes set on doing Kathy Rain some time in the near future. Do yourself a favor and check this one out, will you? We could always do with more finely crafted singleplayer games like this one. Whispers of a Machine gets a 9/10.
Excellent
Summary:
A finely tuned, engaging point & click with a cool Nordic influences.
Whispers of a Machine is a 2019 point & click developed by Clifftop Games and Faravid Interactive. Published by Raw Fury and starring Ivy Dupler, it follows a special agent called into the small town of Nordsund to investigate a double murder. It follows Clifftop's other point & click published by Raw Fury: Kathy Rain: A Detective Is Born from 2016. I first heard of Clifftop by ACG's review of Kathy Rain, so I was looking forward to this when I saw it announced (though I have yet to play KR:ADIS myself). A little while after covering it on my subreddit, I saw that it had also been published on Android so I picked it up. After a few days, I finished it and was immensely satisfied with my experiences. Without further ado, lemme tell you why this is a cracking P&C.
Modern adventure games of WoaM's strata (such as those released by the talented folks at Wadjet Eye) typically conform to a "hand drawn backgrounds, pixel art characters" format, and Whispers is no different. The good news is, Whispers sticks the landing with some great backdrops and solid pixel artistry. There's the UI, which is sleekly designed and unobtrusive, with some options to customize it to your liking (albeit not particularly in depth options to settle on your perfect user interface). Sometimes I did find the game had problems with directing the character to where I'd tapped, though your mileage will vary. The character also just generally moves like molasses, which can be a minor pain when traversing from one side of Nordsund to the other. Along with the pixel art and hand drawn backdrops, you have the character portraits, which are done in a more painterly style and look great as well. All of these disparate art styles could potentially lend to a jarring experience, but the facts that this format is a) commonplace enough and b) bound together by a cohesive design, keeps things chugging along smoothly. What doesn't always chug along so smoothly, unfortunately, are the main character animations while walking. There are times where she will hitch momentarily, in certain parts of the terrain such as staircases, on a reliable basis. While by no means a dealbreaker--and I am no immersion hawk, so it doesn't bother me too much--it happens with enough frequency that it does threaten to mildly annoy once you notice it. What fares far better, however, is the music, which would be an understatement to term as excellent. It actually reminds me of The Witcher 3's tunes, which is always a good thing to have my brain thinking of.
Point & click adventures have been associated, since their inception and subsequent heyday, with what we call "moon logic"--absurd solutions to problems that no one would think of unless they were in the room when the developers were designing those puzzles. Now, I found myself periodically consulting the walkthrough during my time with Whispers--but for what it's worth--I don't think that WoaM suffers so much from moon logic. All of the puzzles and whatnot can be solved just by thinking things out, the walkthrough is more of a "So, I see you're an impatient git," than a necessity borne of bizarre puzzle design. Every time I saw the next step in the walkthrough, I immediately understood that I would've figured it out if I'd remembered every tool in my cachet and kept puzzling things out. What's cool about Whispers, is how it really makes you feel like a detective through the mechanics. You'll interrogate civilians, analyze footprints, find murder weapons, and all of it blends nicely into the written story in the way a video game ought to. Another neat thing worth mentioning is the tightly crafted world design. It's very intuitive; you never have to go through any rigmarole or labyrinths just to get one small yet integral item on one side of the map. Once you go through unlocking an area, it usually connects right to a more easily accessible part of Nordsund.
Being an adventure game, proper good writing is imperative. You could have the glossiest point & click on the market with the most intuitive puzzles, but if your characters are uninteresting, if your story is asinine, if your dialogue is tawdry, then all that polish will be for naught. Thankfully, Whispers is never brought down because of any of that. Its story is a fascinating, sometimes genuinely touching or profound, delve into automation and artificial intelligence. But not for worse, mind you, as it's the unraveling of a really compelling tangle of different factions and ideologies, all of which are given a due fleshing out. I'm always willing to kill for good mysteries, and Whispers is no doubt one of those. When you've finally solved its core enigma, it's a content feeling of witnessing a deftly crafted sleuth 'em up. But plots are different from stories, as we are often told in the writing community by other writers, and so WoaM's plot fares differently to its more central tale. Oh, and a big plus is that there are 3 alternate endings, which give you plenty of reason to replay Whispers, if that's your bag. With all of that in mind, I can see people getting plenty of worthwhile hours out of this game. WoaM is bolstered by its setting--a post-apocalyptic world where society has picked up the pieces to rebuild anew, and all attempts to recreate an artificial intelligence are outlawed.
Then there are the characters. While I can't say that there's some uniform transcendence of archetypes that'll wow you and overwhelm the senses, there are a ton of well-rendered, charming characters who are interesting to try and understand the motivations and secrets of as you're cracking the case. While the killer can be predicted along the way, there are enough other interesting characters and red herrings to throw you off course. Vera, the main character, has her personality defined by how you choose to act in conversations or how you choose to solve your quandaries. As you make decisions, you will gain new cybernetic powers each morning, and they are tailored to your personality, giving an additional reason to go through multiple playthroughs as the way you solve certain puzzles will change dramatically depending on your augs. But all these characters are nothing without their talented voice actors, who bring so much to this production. Dupler is a capable lead, her performance is charming and she has a great sense of range. Other than Ivy, Andy Mack provides what is easily my favorite performance for what will be a clear fan favorite character among those who play WoaM, Valter (and his equally enjoyable puppet, Nisse). He's endlessly charismatic, and like the rest of these talented actors, had me asking every question I could--even where unnecessary to the plot--just to hear what they'd say. And they're given a lot of great stuff to say, thanks to some impeccable dialogue. What surprised me most, though, was how gut-bustingly funny it was from time to time. Valter/Nisse and the town doctor, Dr. Persson (played by Al Pagano), have the most reliably amusing dialogue/vocal performances, and it's clear that the writers knew this. Fortunately, though, they never feel the need to pat themselves on the back for being geniuses like some writers do when they think they've got this joke that'll do gangbusters but it falls flat.
Whispers of a Machine is by no means a transformative experience, but what it does, it does ably. And, if nothing else, it's got my eyes set on doing Kathy Rain some time in the near future. Do yourself a favor and check this one out, will you? We could always do with more finely crafted singleplayer games like this one. Whispers of a Machine gets a 9/10.
Excellent
Summary:
A finely tuned, engaging point & click with a cool Nordic influences.
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