Review
Annie here :)
I played Whisper of the House this week and I have a lot to say about it, so strap in.
First off, I want to be very clear that this game is good. It's fun and satisfying to play, and I think those are two of the most important adjectives when it comes to making games.
Do I recommend Whisper of the House? I would say yes, but only once you've read this newsletter, because I have some critiques.
Critique
Whisper of the House is a decorating sim with a twist. To start, the tutorial has you decorating your own starter home with a limited set of furniture options. I really enjoyed this level because it introduced me to the mechanics in a digestible and fun way. I also liked the level design because the home is laid out in a somewhat frustrating way, making it a real head scratcher trying to make things work, and more importantly, making me crave progression in order to fix the things I didn't like.
This is something I think is very important in the first moments of a game. I think if you can make your player crave progression early on, you're basically set.
There were a couple speedbumps from the beginning, like I didn't like the way characters spoke with emoticons like this: (づ ◕‿◕ )づ Personally, I found it irritating and felt that it damaged my immersion in the world. Secondly, I found the controls, though simple, a bit unintuitive. Most of the time you're just clicking on things to pick them up or put them down, but interacting requires a right click and moving the camera uses the scroll wheel. This all sounds good on paper, but over time I was constantly catching myself using the wrong mouse buttons for things. This is something I think could use more playtesting.
After the initial tutorial of decorating your own home, you are introduced to the main gameplay loop: wake up, go outside, check mail, respond to requests. Most days have you completing one request from a local resident, generally just asking you to furnish or redecorate a space of theirs. You get to know their character a little bit and you receive some money ("vouchers") as a reward.
That being said, there's a big issue with vouchers. Not in theory; it's a perfectly reasonable, standard currency system. No, the issue lies in balance. The vouchers in this game are completely unbalanced. It's way too easy to earn an insane amount of vouchers and it's crazy cheap to buy an insane amount of furniture. Plus it's all sold in mystery boxes, so you end up spending most of your time (when you should be out doing jobs and experiencing the very interesting story!) sifting through hundreds of furniture items to make the perfect home. Luckily I have pretty good self control, so I was able to tear my eyes away from my house periodically to go and play the actual game.
It's a good thing I did, because in doing so I discovered an intriguing story filled with creepy undercurrents ranging from stalking, to ancient rituals, to the collapse of the very fabric of spacetime. There's a lot of really riveting content in this game, and something that I love about it is that a lot of it is designed to potentially go unnoticed. It's almost like you're supposed to pretend you don't know something is very wrong here. Like you're part of the simulation, pretending to be a cozy game and deliberately ignoring the truth. I love it.
However, it feels like the game itself doesn't see what I just described. Everywhere throughout the Steam page, the marketing, and even the structure of the game itself, feels like it doesn't know what it's supposed to be. It's tragic because the game is genuinely interesting and unique but there's a huge tonal mismatch. If you ask me, for the most part this is not an issue with the game. The game could stay mostly as it is, but the cover art and all of the marketing copy (the text describing the game) should be completely revamped to reflect what makes WotH truly worth playing: the creepy, suspenseful mysteries you can choose to uncover or ignore.
Summary
1: Whisper of the House is fun and satisfying. It's easy to sink several hours in and have a great time.
2: There are a couple issues that I think require more testing and user feedback. Thinks like controls being clunky and currency being unbalanced.
3: This game is genuinely unique and interesting. It's got something special. We game devs would call this the "sauce."
4: It feels like the game doesn't properly recognize what its sauce is. The marketing materials, and even much of the game itself, does not capitalize on its strengths.
Final Thoughts
Having read this review, you probably have a pretty good idea of what Whisper of the House is. I wanted to dive really deep with this one because I love the game but I couldn't in good conscience recommend it without disclaiming the disconnect between what it thinks it is and what it actually is.
But now that you know, if it sounds like fun to you, it's definitely worth playing. Especially for under $20.
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