Whisper of the House

There were moments of playing Whisper of the House where it seemed like the game might deliver on its ambitious concept: an entire city of homes and businesses to organize and decorate, with a multitude of secrets to uncover. But ultimately, when it fails to provide an interesting gameplay loop and the core mechanics prove to be fussy and underwhelming, and then it fizzles out entirely by mid- and late-game, all of its cuteness can't save it from feeling like a waste of time. They tried to create a mash-up of so many things that none of them are developed fully or executed well. I also want to push back in the strongest terms against comparisons of Whisper of the House to Unpacking, which was an immaculately designed and narratively satisfying experience. WotH is an unfinished jumble of various mini-games that needs more time in development not just to flesh out various gameplay modalities, but to find its soul. One of the first things I found was that organizing often feels like a horrible chore where many objects don't seem to have a great place to go, resulting in a cluttered mess. Inexplicably, in other instances you are micromanaged into placing each object EXACTLY where an outline is shown. It's so incredibly boring, you start to wonder: why bother? By the later missions where you're given more latitude to decorate how you want, I was so checked out that I would place the absolute bare minimum pieces of furniture and cash out. Then there were moments where things seemed like they might improve: maybe you buy some furniture blind boxes and get a cute piece! But then you find that there's consistently a weird mismatch between the availability of decorative objects and places to use them. Either you're using the same coffee table 5 times in a row because it's the only non-hideous piece for the job, or you have an entire niche furniture set with no client or project to use it on. Controls themselves are pretty lackluster, with no good way to manage decorating the many loft spaces. You can't switch between floors, so you're stuck trying to ignore the visual clipping and yolo-ing placing a couch where you think one could go. Like another reviewer mentioned, there are also cases like the Yokai house where you're faced with an onslaught of furniture all jammed in the front yard. Because you can't temporarily put it in storage or otherwise get it out of the way, the whole time I should have been enjoying the cuteness I instead felt like I was drowning in mess. In a couple of homes where I had a definite theme in mind, I had a lot of difficulty finding enough furniture/flooring/walls/accents to make it come to life in any satisfying way. Again, I came up against the frustrating barrier of seeing that I had tons of choices, but many were essentially duplicates with no distinct vibe. You can have low-pile ugly carpet in 20 colors and claim to have so many choices, but at the end of the day it's still ugly carpet, you know? Then suddenly, the mayor rewards you with another house for doing such a good job... er, decorating other houses! It's so stupid it doesn't even make sense within the game world. And just dropping it in your lap without making you save for it and purchase it makes it feel unimportant. But then I'd be hooked in again when I found a cute mini-game. When I discovered the ability to mix cocktails, I thought "This is adorable, maybe I'm being too hard on WotH." Over time, however, even the hidden item crafting started to feel like pointless filler. Cooking for the restaurant is like a slice of an entirely different food management sim, and not one I enjoyed. I would have traded it all for a better end-game. By the time you find the last aberration and get the last unlock to control the weather, there is zero point in ever using that ability because the game has more or less been over for a long time and you're limping across the finish line. This is where I called it quits and uninstalled. So, will you like Whisper of the House? Yes, if you like vapid time-wasters. Yes, if you want to get your hopes up repeatedly, only to have them dashed in a sea of tedium and underdeveloped mechanics. Yes, if you're not spending your own money. And perhaps yes, if you just need to spend a few brain-dead minutes distracted from your actual stressful life stuff. It does suck to be this harsh, but it's misleading to see so many people invoking Unpacking in their own reviews. It set up expectations that were never, ever going to be fulfilled, and you should know that going in. Also, let's be real--the artwork in Unpacking was much less generic. You could viscerally feel each era the protagonist was in by her game controllers and clothes and cosmetics. It remains one of one, with absolutely no competition here. As a final note, if my review hasn't felt persuasive so far: consider what it signals that the game is titled "Whisper of the House" in English. What does that even mean? It has nothing to do with organizing, or decorating, nor does it meaningfully reference the underlying aberrations that comprise the city's central mystery. It sounds more like a 1970s Japanese horror film that was casually plugged into Google Translate and someone said "Enh, good enough." That should be your final clue that at every point where the developers had the chance to make a great game, they instead implemented something that mostly functioned and said, "Enh, that'll do."