Analysis of Children of Silentown, silence and melodies in the city of lost children

Children of Silent Townthe new game from Elf Games and Luna II Studio, is such a personal title that verges on “Timburtonian” in look, plot, and principles, but at the same time it has a personality that makes it sweet, delicate and a complete enjoyment. We enter this game in the world of narrative. And it is that starting Children of Silentown requires an important mental rest: let’s forget about strong and fast emotions. But neither can we fall into understanding her look with a puerile world. Is an adult story, but with the delicacy of graphics typical of a cartoon film. It is, we repeat, extraordinarily particular. We proceed with the analysis of this tale of monsters, which turns out nothing soft.

The adult sensation given off by the title comes to us when we execute it and see the children in a charming environment and at the same time typical of a Halloween story. reminiscence of movies like ‘The Forest’ (puritanical environment and do not go out into the forest, danger! Discipline keeps us alive. And here, also silence. Everything is silent except for the soft music that accompanies us) is clear, but the white eyes of the characters they make us turn our eyes towards aesthetic experiences like those lived with Tim Burton and the like. The narrative delicacy leads us to see how the peaceful town of muted colors where the protagonist lives, a teenager who lives with her parents, is surrounded by colors such as black and blood red, which send the message of death to our eyes. . Something that intensifies the presence of a panel with photos of missing children, which have been taken over by the monsters outside. That is why they cannot even “raise their voices”.

The first moments of the game make us think that perhaps we are facing a product that rides very close to a harvest moon either Stardew Valley perhaps, but nothing could be further from the truth, they make us tour the house of the protagonist and the surroundings, soaking up the familiar and close environment so that we feel part of the story. But all takes a quick narrative turnin which we begin to be aware that it’s all about puzzles (or so we will think). But then, the mentioned puzzles take us further: in a kind of distant kiss towards Zelda, we go joining musical notes (in the form of stickers for the diary) that make up melodies, which our protagonist can sing to trigger reactions in the other characters (or to read their thoughts), although this, in turn, will cause more puzzles. The intensity will go up, because some narrative strips will make us simply press a button with a related action, even if it is not the one we want.

The animations are the best, playing with the cartoons and without leaving a delicate cel-shading that does not take away the possibility of giving us shots close to the protagonist and the environment. Everything is drawn, as we say, lacking three-dimensionality, but with a particular personality. The difficulty is something that we must deal with: the game is, frankly, easy in terms of tasks, focusing almost 100% (except for some quest that will not take more than a few minutes) on us following the plot. The missing children in the woods, the monsters, the family… everything becomes more than interesting in Silentown, which in a few hours will launch us a complete story, but it has caused the subscriber some anger when noticing that some puzzles or mini-games were not expressed in the correct way to do them without lose your temper, unfortunately breaking the rhythm of the narrative. Once we have mediated the game, we will already be aware of how it works and what research pattern we must use to move around the scenario, all of them quite brief, but very, very detailed and full of charm.

In our case, we have played the Xbox Series X/S version, but given its graphic style, we have not been able to show any problem, and the control with the controller is more than correct, making the point’n style click works perfectly also with a pad in the hands.

Are we going to be scared with Children of Silentown? Not at all, it’s more of a story. But yes, effective, interesting and above all, with a style that is pleasing to the eye and to the ear, because in addition to the translation (of texts) into Spanish, the soundtrack is exceptional, although also full of tenderness, even in moments of greater plot pressure or appearance of supernatural beings. A more than recommended title for fans of story-focused adventures, and of course for anyone looking for a sound and visual section to match the circumstances.