Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - Hier 00:43

Winterlight – Where silence says it all – Review

It has been a while, hasn’t it? By our count, the last time we took a look at a traditional visual novel was Sol Dorado Heist, back in March of last year. We figured we were well overdue for one. With our hometown being snowed over, we were drawn to the title Winterlight – Where silence says it all. We brewed a cup of tea, wrapped ourselves in a comfy blanket, and booted up Winterlight on our Switch 2. Story We’d be doing both you, the reader, and the visual novel itself a disservice by giving away too much of the story, so we’ll stick to the premise and avoid spoilers as much as possible. Winterlight’s story is told from the perspective of Elías, a young man returning to his hometown of Bahía Mansa after several years. We’re not immediately made aware why he left in the first place, nor why he returned, but it’s clear that something happened in the past involving Elías’ mother. His grandma Clara, who takes him in, hands Elías a letter from his mother, but he is afraid to open it. The letter becomes central to the story, as it holds a dark truth… or does it? As Elías finds his footing once again in Bahía Mansa, he is reunited with his childhood friend Mara, who may inadvertently hold some of the answers he so desperately seeks about the past. As intriguing as Winterlight’s central mystery of the letter is, its contents aren’t what’s important here. The presence of the letter serves more as a framing device for Elías’ internal struggles. The letter is the catalyst, forcing Elías to look into the proverbial mirror at himself, and by extension, the reader. Winterlight raises more questions than it answers. When those questions are existential, it’s the reader who is expected to gaze inwards to reach their own conclusion. It’s here that reading Winterlight becomes a contemplative experience and is at its strongest. The way Winterlight taps into those feelings of doubt that most of us have experienced makes the story deeply relatable. In fact, it was what sucked us into Winterlight once we started reading. Even so, the story itself leaves several narrative questions unanswered, resulting in an unsatisfying conclusion and feeling unfinished overall. Contributing to this feeling is how Winterlight tells its story rather than what it tells you. A lyrical phrase like “Elías watched the golden light bathe the table, spilling over the mug like a promise.” is great in a vacuum, almost poetic even. If your entire story is written like this, however, it becomes dense and hard to sit through. The greatest irony here is perhaps that the verbosity of Winterlight ends up opposite of what it tries to achieve, as phrases start to lose meaning and come across as shallow, despite their length. Given that the in-illustration text is in Spanish, and the story is available in Spanish and Portuguese, we assume that Winterlight wasn’t written in English originally. Perhaps it’s just a case of an overenthusiastic translator then, but for the vast majority of Winterlight’s potential audience, that won’t matter. They’ll simply see the English version and dismiss it as poor writing. There is an overall uncanniness to the English text as well, leading us to believe that it’s not just Winterlight’s images where AI was involved. Graphics Because yes, Winterlight’s visuals were created with AI, as disclosed on the game’s Steam page. We won’t get into the ethics of using AI-generated imagery, as that’s an entirely separate discussion. What we will say is that the devil is in the details, and the images often don’t line up with the text. You’ll read about a blue teapot with flowers, yet the teapot shown on screen has no flowers on it. A table is described as having a tablecloth on it, but there isn’t one in the image. As silly as it sounds, this does undermine immersion. More than once, just as we were getting into the story, we noticed a discrepancy like this, and it pulled us right back out. Sound That same issue even extends to Winterlight’s soundscape. Scenes often mention music playing on the radio, but the description simply doesn’t line up with what you hear. What you do hear is a set of melancholic piano tunes by Australian composer Scott Buckley. To Winterlight’s credit, the music fits with the overall atmosphere, but it’s worth mentioning that Buckley offers a wide range of license-free music through his website. We don’t mean to undermine Buckley’s excellent work and put it away as “generic stock music”, but the tracks weren’t composed specifically for Winterlight either. On its own, the music is good, but together with the discrepancies between images and text, it amplifies the idea that Winterlight was cobbled together rather than carefully designed. Gameplay We can be brief when it comes to “gameplay”: Winterlight is a visual novel, and so it does visual novel things. You read through the story, and occasionally get to make a choice. This determines the route that the story follows, with three possible endings. Curiously enough, the game’s UI is significantly different from most other visual novels we’ve read, with a very limited in-game settings menu. Most of the stuff you’d actually want to use, such as the text log, skip function, or ability to scroll back in the story, is hidden behind the pause menu. Even then, some settings we’re used to from the commonly used Ren’Py engine, like adjustable text speed, are missing. Conclusion As flawed a visual novel as Winterlight is, it still resonated with us. Beneath the dense writing and mismatched audiovisual presentation, you’ll find a contemplative story that isn’t afraid to ask readers to look inward. Winterlight lacks subtlety about what it wants to do, and because of this, it undermines itself. One can’t help but wonder what a more carefully crafted version of this story could have been. As it stands, Winterlight frustrates more often than it resonates. This particular novel doesn’t live up to expectations, but SMV Games’ potential shimmers through occasionally. If they try their hand at another one, we’ll be first in line to give them another chance.