Whispers of a Machine

This game fell off steep. I really liked it at first. The aesthetic was cool and I loved the Norse words and runes. I loved the little investigation 'modifications' the character has. But..... it fell off really hard. What starts as a really cool question regarding the place and purpose of AI falls off into a story that is not well knit. After the initial hit of oh this seems cool, it falls off to be a very boring game. Not only boring, but there's some scenes that just make no sense and its like huh? For example this one scene where the character (as a cop/detective) immediately lets someone who shoots at her intentionally, go for no reason. There's also a huge portion of anti-religious ranting. And then to make it worse the endings are anti-climactic and have no resolution. The endings are not impactful and lazily done. There's no pay off either way. All in all if I think, do I wish I had that time back? Yes. Yes I do.

Enjoyable PnC adventure. Just a shame that it uses an autosave feature and basically locks you out of a choice and forces you to replay the entire game to see what happens. It also seems like the choices by itself don't really amount to a lot, just a few alternative ways to solve some puzzles. I can get that you want to avoid save-scumming, but honestly.... I really am not going to replay an entire game just to witness the alternative ending. Odd choice really.

I've really wanted to avoid giving a negative review, and even then I hope my explanation for why can give anyone reading this an idea of whether they'd be bothered by the same thing. I'll also mention that my play time is as long as it is because I started it a long time ago but got distracted by other things before finishing it, and have only recently given it another shot. I was on the fence for a chunk of my playthrough. I'm not the most experienced point-and-click player, so was worried that some of what I didn't like may be normal for the genre. Initially, my complaints were mainly in terms of the puzzles, as there were too many (for my taste) that required trial and error. There are instances where you have to go back and look at something you'd discovered on a previous day without any clear reason to do so, or go to a location that hasn't been relevant in forever just in case. I won't say it's padding, I don't presume to know the developers' motives. I just found that frequently I would have no clear idea of what to do, and the answer would be to just go back to previous places and see if anything changed and/or just try everything interactable again. More frustrating were the cases where I was right about the solution, but because I hadn't done some other specific thing first, I couldn't actually follow through. Where it finally lost me was in the story. To be clear, the writing was generally good up until I hit this wall. The way characters spoke sounds natural overall, and they felt distinct and generally made sense. There are some situations where it feels like it's shoehorning you down a certain path, which bothered me, even if they hadn't happened too often to totally kill my enjoyment. But then they crank this up past plausibility by turning the player character into an [b]absolute moron[/b]. I'll try to avoid major spoilers in how I explain this, but am putting them behind spoiler tags to be safe. First: [spoiler] someone tries to kill your character, and you just ... leave them to hang out at home. The player character just says "sit tight in case I need to talk to you again" and then leaves.[/spoiler]. It will not come as a surprise that this turns out badly. Next, and related: [spoiler] the game massively telegraphs a certain kind of technology being used. A glaringly obvious trap is set, but you (the player) can't do anything about it, so just have to watch your character stumble blindly into it.[/spoiler] Your character is set up to be capable if inexperienced, but this goes so far beyond that as to just be completely ridiculous. It ultimately comes down to forcing the story in a specific direction regardless of player agency or anything that's happened up to that point. That the above events happened within less than an hour (and there are other examples) took me completely out of the story. It's a shame, as I had been enjoying the small-scale interactions and getting a feel for how this little town works. But at this point I've lost any trust that the rest of the story will play out naturally or organically, while any characterization of the player character has been completely blown up. So ultimately I can't recommend.

Overall, I enjoyed it. The story is good, not something extraordinary, but interesting enough to keep you engaged. The game is around six hours long, and most of the puzzles are not too complicated, which makes it pretty easy to play through without getting stuck too often. It could have been a bit longer. The choices didn’t feel very impactful. To be honest, I only felt like one of my choices actually influenced the game in a noticeable way. Still, it was a nice adventure. I’d say it’s worth playing.

Pretty solid game! Good sci-fi mystery story, the different options/paths are interesting. My biggest complaint is some of the puzzle solutions aren't signposted quite as well as I'd like leading to me fumbling around and doing trial and error. Also I have a big specific complaint about one early puzzle that requires the use of the biometric analyzer when there should be at least two other ways to solve it. Final judgement is that it's a good game if you're a fan of the genre, but Clifftop Games's other work, the Kathy Rain series, is better.

I am a big fan of Cyberpunk, so I gave Whispers of a Machine a try. And I am happy to say that I wasn't disappointed. From what starts off as a murder investigation, it quickly blossoms into a story about conspiracy and illegal A.I. usage. Aside from the usual inventory management that you would expect from a traditional point-and-click adventure game, Vera comes equipped with a number of augmentations floating around in her system that are often used to help her in her investigation. The best part about this is that there are three paths you can take to the end, which not only makes this a replayable title but also unlocks different abilities based on which of the three you choose. In all, this is a must play for any fan of Cyberpunk stories or just adventure games in general.

Classical style, pixel art, point'n'click game. Spiced up with psychology building of character, that give you different skills, based on how you approach things. If you know, you know, no need to hint more. I liked.

One of the best, deepest adventures I've ever played, up there with but even surpassing Dream Machine and the Blackwell series. The voice acting is amazing, the puzzles are sound, there is innovation in the gameplay that I wish more mystery/detective games would use. The story, characters, writing are perfect, the world building is beyond that. A master piece where the only head scratcher is people giving this a negative review. How?

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såååååå bra. väldigt kathy rain