Reader reviews for The Silent Sky

It has its flaws, mostly for trying to pack a fair amount of complex things inside what should be a simple walk in a park situation.

However it has a big counterweight to balance the flaws - the game has an incredible set of quality audio voice-overs accompanied by hand-drawn, dynamic graphic scenes.

To explain further, 

what I mean by dynamics in this game are the unique moments which are triggered depending on how you have interacted with the game environment. When you don’t pick up certain inventory item which the game actually needs later on then the environment around you is giving you the way to still pick it up, albeit forcefully but mostly in a humorous way.

Then there are multi-choice dialog options to choose from when interacting with game characters. There are a few non-player characters, but difficult to discover all of them.

The dialog options themselves aren’t really changing anything too drastically, but they do give you ways to get to know your characters better. As well as when you feel like acting a little rebellious then the dialog choices are letting you do exactly that. Although it might make it harder to solve further puzzles but it’s an enjoyment to just pick unrealistic chat replies and having the game and character to play it out.

This brings me to second or perhaps the biggest strength about this game - It’s replay value. This might be also the reason why the game is kind of short. Although it took me about 4 hours to finish the game in first time.

When you have finished it and actually replaying the game for perhaps to solve puzzles in a different way then you might discover a different set of events happening and various other dialog options you didn’t pick from the first run.

There are also hidden or hard to discover scenes and events. These hidden gems however are for the devoted adventurer. Just don’t forget to sleep when replaying it over and over again.

I so wanted to like this game. I really did. But it was impossible. Really was.

1. The real drag starts right from the opening screen. You are forced to hover and search the hidden menu items from the screen. I think that the developer thought it would be fun. Well it’s bloody seriously NOT.

2. The game doesn’t stretch to full screen properly, it leaves two thick bars on both sides of the screen.

3. Hotspots lack names. In the beginning, when there was need to put on some clothes, I clicked the shoes. The character blurts out: “I’ll want to put on some clothes first” ... well okay, I’m sorry as heck that I didn’t know that shoes are not clothes, and even if I’d been able to foresee that, I couldn’t tell if I was clicking the shoes or the shirt, ‘cause I didn’t know where the hotstpot changes to another.

4. Voice acting was almost inaudible and the sound effects really loud, and there was no setting to adjust their volume separately.

5. When I finally decided to stand up from the bed, there was 3 or 4 hints as to what to do next. Like… seriously. I’m not 4 years old and I’m trying to play adventure game here. There’s no need to hold my hand so tightly. And the next hints just came…. one… after….another…. ...and I couldn’t know if the character was done talking or not.

That was the time I hit the quit button and ran away from this game. I just couldn’t take any more.

On top of that, it costs over 10€ and it’s only part 1. I don’t even want to know how short it is for the price, but I really doubt that it justifies the expensive price tag.

The game opens very mysteriously, on a silent, starry sky. The camera pans down on a farmhouse. The cursor appears. It takes a while, but as you hover over certain sections of the farm, you realize this is a creatively designed menu screen.

The game starts with main character is Siim, a twelve year old boy, startled one night by a peculiar thunder/lightning show outside his house. His dog Terri is startled and Siim wants to go comfort her. That’s where the first obstacles and puzzles appear: finding Terri’s toy and leaving the house without being seen by Siim’s dad.

“The Silent Sky” has beautiful backgrounds filled with subtle animations. The biggest part of the game takes place in the woods, which makes you feel like you’re searching for the Black Lodge in “Twin Peaks” or something. The character designs can be compared to those in the animated TV-series “King of the Hill”.

The interface is pretty straightforward: right clicks investigate hotspots, left clicks uses them. Sometimes you need to look at something first before Siim will realize it’s important enough to pick up. The cursor automatically changes into the default action: an eye/magnifying glass to look at something, a hand to pick it up, but you can still choose which mouse button to click. Two legs walking indicate an exit. Early in the game you find a carrier bag, which Siim will hang over his shoulder. You enter and exit the inventory by clicking on it.

There’s not much music in the game while exploring, adding to the silent and mysterious atmosphere. Music arises only during important scenes. There are only a couple of characters, and thus you’ll mostly hear the voicework of Vincent Holmes as Siim. He has an appropriately young, gentle voice, easy to listen to. He’s certainly not an annoying kid. Sounds and voices have this 3D-effect on them, and even some sort of echo when in wide open spaces, lower in volume when they’re in the distance. There’s an incredible amount of detail in this game. Not only in game-building elements but also in storytelling.

“The Trust” is only the first part of “The Silent Sky” but you can tell that Kaspar-Hardi Raave, its creator, has a much bigger story in stock for us. I for one am very interested to find out what will happen to Siim next.