Angel Whisper: The Suspense Visual Novel Left Behind by a Game Creator.
released on Sep 28, 2023
This is the last work of a certain game creator who mysteriously disappeared. The cross reality ADV, known for its shocking conclusion. "Angel Whisper", released by Child-Dream in 1999, became a major topic of conversation with its system of playing the posthumous game while browsing actual websites, raising the question, "Did this really happen?".
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I can't recommend this to anyone at all in its current state. It worked fine when it first released, but has since received an update (version 1.0.1) that causes an error that closes the software before I reach even the title screen. It takes multiple tries (sometimes over six), reopening the software, before I can actually get past it.
Anyway...
I picked this up immediately upon finding it, simply because it's made by Child-Dream, which developed a game I first played many years ago: Scar of the Doll. There weren't really any reviews to go by at the time.
I'm curious about what sort of experience I would have had playing the original 1999 PC game (which was never released in English). It seems like the sort of game that would have been really immersive! I think it's really fun when the player needs to use resources external to the game to investigate and glean information to then apply to the game. All of the necessary information is included in this remake, in the form of simulated websites (it still provides the web addresses for those websites, but you'll have the options of reading those pages in Japanese, or using Google Translate, so...). It functions, and it's clear why they included them, but I think it removes some of the fun of figuring out when to reference those websites, and that feeling of exploring something real. (Which I suppose was a large part of the appeal of the original.)
I kind of liked the sort-of message of the game, especially as someone greatly distressed about the current course humanity is taking, but the whole thing was pretty sloppy. The initial scenario set-up takes way too long and was pretty boring. It became somewhat more interesting after that, but was still mostly a slog. The translation is pretty bad; not only inelegant and lacking in personality, but hard to understand at times, which is especially unfortunate in a mystery game, as the player is supposed to be picking up on details with which to formulate their own theories (that's what I'd like to do, anyway).
The mystery feels all over the place, which did make it largely unpredictable (plus)... It ties together OK, though. Most things were explained. I'm not entirely sure what to think.
The character art isn't bad, but for a game with horror elements, it's really lacking that eerie feeling that the original character art evokes. I think it would have been better to just clean up the original art and use that.
There are some great music tracks. Some of the vocal pieces in particular enchanted me.
The game has some technical problems (the most egregious of which, I noted at the top of this review). Whenever a field for entering text appears on the screen, if one tries using the "rewind" feature, the game basically freezes up -- none of the buttons will work anymore. All I could do was close the software (which is annoying to reopen). I had some other experiences with that feature malfunctioning too, but I still appreciated that it was present.
Also, I played this mostly docked, just because I have a preference for playing my Switch that way, but navigating (especially) the map using the Joy Cons is a nightmare! Way easier to use the touch screen.
Even if they fix the technical problems, I don't know to whom I could recommend this experience.
Anyway...
I picked this up immediately upon finding it, simply because it's made by Child-Dream, which developed a game I first played many years ago: Scar of the Doll. There weren't really any reviews to go by at the time.
I'm curious about what sort of experience I would have had playing the original 1999 PC game (which was never released in English). It seems like the sort of game that would have been really immersive! I think it's really fun when the player needs to use resources external to the game to investigate and glean information to then apply to the game. All of the necessary information is included in this remake, in the form of simulated websites (it still provides the web addresses for those websites, but you'll have the options of reading those pages in Japanese, or using Google Translate, so...). It functions, and it's clear why they included them, but I think it removes some of the fun of figuring out when to reference those websites, and that feeling of exploring something real. (Which I suppose was a large part of the appeal of the original.)
I kind of liked the sort-of message of the game, especially as someone greatly distressed about the current course humanity is taking, but the whole thing was pretty sloppy. The initial scenario set-up takes way too long and was pretty boring. It became somewhat more interesting after that, but was still mostly a slog. The translation is pretty bad; not only inelegant and lacking in personality, but hard to understand at times, which is especially unfortunate in a mystery game, as the player is supposed to be picking up on details with which to formulate their own theories (that's what I'd like to do, anyway).
The mystery feels all over the place, which did make it largely unpredictable (plus)... It ties together OK, though. Most things were explained. I'm not entirely sure what to think.
The character art isn't bad, but for a game with horror elements, it's really lacking that eerie feeling that the original character art evokes. I think it would have been better to just clean up the original art and use that.
There are some great music tracks. Some of the vocal pieces in particular enchanted me.
The game has some technical problems (the most egregious of which, I noted at the top of this review). Whenever a field for entering text appears on the screen, if one tries using the "rewind" feature, the game basically freezes up -- none of the buttons will work anymore. All I could do was close the software (which is annoying to reopen). I had some other experiences with that feature malfunctioning too, but I still appreciated that it was present.
Also, I played this mostly docked, just because I have a preference for playing my Switch that way, but navigating (especially) the map using the Joy Cons is a nightmare! Way easier to use the touch screen.
Even if they fix the technical problems, I don't know to whom I could recommend this experience.