Children of Silentown PC Review

Children of Silentown is a game with an interesting development history. The game was originally a short, animated film that was never released, but then they decided that it might make for a good interactive experience. So, Elf Games and Luna2 Studio collaborated to produce this game. Children of Silentown is a point-and-click adventure game set in a dark, unhappy little town where monsters roam the forest that surrounds them all, and every now and then, people go missing.

Children of Silentown is, at first, a fairly standard point-and-click game. It throws you into its world and have you find things to complete a few odd jobs around your house and town. The game is focused on exploration as you need to find items to either combine with other items or to use in the world. Many of these are fairly obvious, and the game, in general, lacks the kind of moon logic you’d often find in many of these kinds of games. There are no intentionally obfuscated puzzles like you might find in older LucasArts games or their spiritual successors like Broken Age.

 

The puzzles are often things like needing to use your slingshot to get a ball off a tower, but the slingshot is broken so you need to find something to fix it, and some socks you find do the job just fine. However, this fairly standard initial approach, in which you can easily end up meandering around for ages while searching every nook and cranny for some random item you need, does fall away when some other mechanics are introduced.

A central theme in Children of Silentown is sound. The town is rendered silent because the monsters outside are dangerous and no one wants to make too much noise in case the monsters grab someone. However, the main character can sing. She’s taught by her mother to sing some songs, and some of the “items” you pick up while playing are actually musical notes. You learn sounds from your environment and incorporate them into music.

Each of the songs you learn has some other special attribute attached to it. The songs allow you to do something. For instance, the first song allows you to peer into the deepest desires of people around you. Sometimes that can give you hints, for instance, one boy really wants some sweets, and that’s the hint you need to get passed him. That song can also allow you to progress the story by forcing the inner thoughts of certain characters out into the open, but these characters need to be helped if they want to have their inner thoughts manifest.

 

The songs lead to different mini-games, such as the inner desire song giving you a knitting mini-game that involves threading their metaphorically broken desires together by stitching a pattern in the correct sequence. These mini-games are essentially small puzzles. However, they aren’t the only puzzles as there are also other mini-games along the way, such as a jigsaw puzzle to put the broken pieces of some labels back together. These mini-games add some variety to a game that would otherwise be a fairly standard point-and-click adventure, and it makes Children of Silentown a much better experience for it.

The exploration, inventory puzzles, and occasional mini-games make up the bulk of the gameplay, but talking to the town’s many characters is also a central aspect of Children of Silentown. The town is a small, creepy place, but it’s full of unique characters who are developed over the course of the game. Each of them has their own thoughts and desires, their own personalities to learn, and their own issues.

Every now and then, you’re provided with some dialogue choices, but Children of Silentown is generally linear. The small choices you make aren’t going to massively change things, but you will be guided along a superb narrative that has some good twists and turns along the way. It’s also suitably creepy and unnerving to deal with the things that go bump in the night.

 

In addition, your character constantly has nightmares that add a different element to the proceedings. The dream sequences, in many ways, are like visual novels. No real gameplay, but more of an interactive cinematic. It adds a good sense of tension to the game to be forced to click a button that says “look deeper” or “enter the forest,” or something similar. It’s creepy, it’s horror-filled, and the art style gives it that Tim Burtonesque flair.

Children of Silentown is a game with fantastic visual design. The characters are rather doll-like and give off similar vibes to something like Don’t Starve or Coraline, especially with the design off the eyes being large black and white saucers that stare out at you like the button eyes from Coraline. Overall, it has a scary storybook style aesthetic that should give fans of horror a good bit of enjoyment.

Furthermore, the sound design, because of the focus on music, is similarly great. Eerie and melancholic noises illuminate Children of Silentown’s soundscape, and the songs are both sweet and sad things that linger. The jagged spikes of sound that accompany the horror sequences are also fantastically put together and offer a great extra sense of unease to the whole affair.

 

Children of Silentown is not a scary game though. It certainly has horror elements, and it engages in horror-filled sequences, but the game doesn’t attempt to truly make you scared or use any jump scares or anything similar. The characters are often scared, and you can feel their fear through the screen, but sadness is a far more pervasive experience in the game. Far more so than fear.

The adults in the town are afraid. People go missing, they have rules to stop others from going missing, but people keep disappearing anyway. The kids in town are still just kids. They want to play and make noise, but that’s dangerous, so the kids are stifled by the adults. Children of Silentown is a sad experience. There certainly are highs, but there’s a persistent feeling of overwhelming depression throughout the experience.

Many point-and-click adventure games like to use humor, but don’t expect that from Children of Silentown. This game is a narrative-oriented point-and-click adventure game that’s far more focused on solving the sad mysteries of the town rather than making you laugh. It’s a fantastic thing that deserves a lot of attention, and the fact that it was designed by a small team should be a point of pride.

 

Children of Silentown is highly recommendable to anyone who enjoys point-and-click games and narrative-heavy games, but doesn’t go in expecting moon logic puzzles or a funny experience. You won’t get either of those things, but if you want a dark experience set in a quiet town, then Children of Silentown is exactly what you will enjoy.
 

Justin van Huyssteen (@LC_Lupus)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed