The Thin Silence (PC) Review

The Thin Silence starts off in small, contained areas, with the aim being to crack whatever conundrums Ezra Westmark faces. Nothing too shocking; nothing hitting the emotional button… just yet, anyway. Visually, everything is minimalistic, with stick thin characters and rudimentary graphical fidelity for the surroundings, rather like the Knytt series. This has its positives and negatives, since there are some gruesome revelations slipped in that benefit from not being intricately detailed to the point of disturbing folk, yet some of the effect the story attempts to enforce is watered down in the same breath. Whatever the case, stylistically it does do the job of coming across as an indie project trying something different from the norm, and it comes backed by an amazingly emotive score from an artist called Light Frequency. It cannot be stressed enough just how the music really does a sublime job of supporting the (supposedly) heavy-hitting themes faced during the adventure.

At Ezra's disposal is an array of items that can be used alone, or joined together to create new objects to help out in the numerous roadblocks he comes up against. Some of the creations are rather pointless red herrings, but others are absolutely essential and used time and again as the journey continues. Using a hook to clamber up metallic obstacles, special boots to climb fences, a battery pack to power up various terminals for operating, flames to ignite torches, rope to create access routes, are just some of the many inventive objects at Ezra's disposal, really getting the ol' grey matter working to figure out how to move onwards.

It is in the puzzle stakes that The Thin Silence excels. Unfortunately, though, it gets too hung up on its attempt at delivering story content, with it proving to be an element that does not hit the mark at all. There are warnings at the very beginning about the mental state of gamers playing through this, absorbing the tale being woven and being adversely affected, but there is no real fear of any depression hitting, other than moments of boredom from lengthy chunks of text to digest or confusion over what the actual point of it all is. It tries so hard to make a point, with Ezra doing a lot of self-reflection, but the narrative is simply not engaging, so areas where players must guide the stick-figure character around, with his torturously slow pace (just wait until you see him auto-running at the end…it really is a killer; why could he not run elsewhere?!), sap all the enjoyment out of what is otherwise a brilliant puzzle adventure.