The Haunted Hoard: Whispering Willows (PS4)

Whispering Willows is a game that ended up on my radar in an unusual way. I routinely check the PlayStation store sales to see if there’s anything interesting to pick up for cheap, and to that end, I sort the products by lowest price. Rather than finding Whispering Willows this way though, I instead saw its very large collection of PlayStation profile avatars for sale again and again, and while I had no interest in these as products, seeing this game’s cast of hand-drawn specters this way piqued my interest. Whether these low price pictures were unintentional or ingenious advertising, their repeated discounts paid off as I eventually did get around to playing the game they came from.

 

Whispering Willows is a pretty traditional ghost story in some regards. Vengeful spirits inhabiting a haunted mansion that once played host to grisly murders is a classic formula, and while Whispering Willows does try to introduce new ideas to it, there are no major shakeups that feel like they’re truly breaking away from this familiar setup. The game stars Elena Elkhorn, a teenage girl who heads to the Willows Mansion when her father disappears while working there. Thanks to her Native American ancestry though, Elena is able to feel the spirits on the estate, the ghost of the shaman Flying Hawk further opening her eyes to the spirit world and its intersection with this dark and dangerous location. Elena needs to interact with spirits both malevolent and friendly to work towards rescuing her father, the ghosts providing clues, standing in her way until their unfinished business is complete, or outright attacking her depending on the circumstances of their own passing.

Whispering Willows’s look is definitely one of its biggest strengths. The hand drawn approach not only makes any still shot of the game look appealing, but the dreary backgrounds are made all the stronger by the details put into them. The characters of the game are shaded and designed in a less realistic fashion than the moody backdrops of the mansion and the surrounding area, but the humans and ghosts remain appealing and can contribute to the horror as well. Many of the ghosts Elena encounters still wear the scars of whatever killed them, these twisted, wounded, floating bodies not outright disturbing but still having that dark mark on their design that contributes to the story’s exploration of the area’s gruesome past. Most of your details on what exactly happened are provided by way of collectible notes, these factoring into the game’s plot progression as well so the most pivotal ones to understanding the adventure aren’t going to be missed by accident. Whispering Willows does do a good job constructing its tone and providing many side stories related to the events of the mansion’s past, but all these little mysteries are bit too typical and tiny to really sink your teeth into. They combine into a whole that feels a bit meatier for their inclusion, but they are often predictable and lack the punch needed to make for a more compelling overall tale.

Exploration of the mansion and its grounds is done in a style similar to a point and click adventure game despite Whispering Willows’s 2D sidescroller elements. Progress is dependent on finding the rights items and using them in the right way or solving a puzzle that’s blocking your way, and much like the plot, many of these are decent but not groundbreaking. Having to interact with different spirits and learn their histories makes for an interesting element to some of them, but the major mechanic the game relies on for spicing up its problem solving is Elena’s special gift to leave her body and move around the world as a spirit. This is her only way to interact with the lingering dead, but it can also allow her to pass into areas her physical body wouldn’t fit through, the spectral Elena often needing to arrange an area or grab an item in fairly small but manageable puzzle moments. Most of the puzzles are pretty easy to figure out admittedly, and some of them rely more on searching large areas or backtracking rather than really working out a solution, but things like shortcuts in the main mansion and the constant smattering of small but easy activities to keep you busy prevent this short game from losing its momentum. As far as serving as the interactive portions between the unraveling plot they do their duty and the puzzles even have a few strong moments like their function in the dramatic climax or any moments where the story and problem solving really mix together well into something fairly cohesive.

 

While most of Whispering Willows proceeds at a relaxed pace that makes it fairly accessible even for casual or younger players, there are moments where Elena is in direct peril and she needs to move quickly or at the right moment to avoid her untimely demise. Some of these moments can be very effective, the first encounter with a malicious spirit sold very well by the striking dark form of the specter chasing after you, and some moments like the attack in the hedge maze by the hedges themselves are more compelling because of the angle the game goes for with the design of the spirits. However, while there are many moments where the imagery helps sell these threats and the checkpointing makes it easy to recover from them if you are caught, the game’s most common form of danger is the least interesting. Little skittering bugs that are only visible in the spirit realm become a constant feature of later puzzles that mostly amount to waiting out their patrols, and while not all of these are outright bad, they do just add to the pile of conditional statements appended to almost every part of Whispering Willows. Everything just ends up feeling a little shallow because of the weak follow-throughs featured throughout, but this is more a case where the game is held back by its limited ambition rather than being hurt to the point it can’t be enjoyed for what does work.

THE VERDICT: If you want a straightforward video game ghost story, Whispering Willows fits the bill pretty well. The mystery of the Willows Mansion isn’t particularly original or ambitious but it has many side stories to follow that can tie into the problem solving in an interesting way. Most of the puzzles are simple despite the promise of the astral projection angle, but the work put into the atmosphere of the game allows the adventure to remain spooky without getting outright gruesome, its puzzle distribution and lovely visuals able to fill the game’s short runtime well enough that its shallower areas won’t harm anyone coming into the game for a bite-sized light horror experience.

 

And so, I give Whispering Willows for PlayStation 4…

An OKAY rating. A cliche story isn’t exactly a death knell if it surrounds something interesting or has some aspect to it done exceptionally, but Whispering Willows isn’t quite able to elevate itself beyond mediocrity. The tone and look of the game do pair well with the mystery angle and help exploring the mansion grounds and meeting its spirits remain interesting despite how underdeveloped the characters can often be, and while the moments of outright danger aren’t too punishing, they are usually sold well by the game’s art unless they’re the fairly bland bugs. Puzzle solving can often be functional rather than challenging, which in some parts prevents the game from dragging but others makes it feel like the adventure is a little too straightforward, but like most parts of the game, they have their moments where you do feel clever for solving them or they tie so closely to the story that simplicity can be forgiven. It’s hard to identify anything that’s truly done wrong, but the distribution of effort is definitely skewed. Its appearance and sound match its horror tone very well, but without the strength of story or engaging play to back it up, it ends up coasting on its tone to mild effectiveness instead of crafting a memorable video game ghost story.

 

It’s appropriate that the character art was what hooked me about Whispering Willows, because the visuals are clearly where the creator’s love was put. Like a piece of candy with a flashy wrapper but a mild taste, Whispering Willows doesn’t leave you feeling deceived because it is still decent overall, but the appearance would be better suited to something that could live up to the look.