Who's Lila?

Very original design and gameplay. The atmosphere is unsettling and uncomfortable in the best possible way. The metagaming is excellent. The game plays with you and with its own rules. At its core, it's an exploration of a troubled mind. Highly recommended if you like games that are strange, unsettling, and not afraid to experiment.

소름끼치는 그래픽이 때깔은 좋은데, 스토리가 참 애매모호합니다. 이게 진짜로 자아에 대한 질문을 던지고 싶은 의도인건지 난해한 껍데기로 허술한 시나리오를 덮어둔건지 아리까리한 애매함입니다... 플레이적으로는, 우측의 표정을 변경하는 게 플레이의 핵심일 줄 알았는데 생각보다 많이 쓰이지 않고 , 나중에는 주인공/타인 구분하는 표시 정도로 사용되어서 기대한 거랑은 달랐어요. 좌측 주인공 움직임은 너무너무 느려서 게임의 분위기랑 어울리긴 해도 다회차를 플레이하는 입장에선 참 사람 속터지네요. 뚜렷한 결론 없이 난해한 분위기를 즐기는 것 자체가 이 게임의 본질이라고 한다면... 제가 좋아하는 스타일은 아니라서 비추합니다.

so so unique. I think I have a very surface level understanding of what's going on, but I can tell it just gets so much deeper and can't wait to explore more

An exceptional concept that is completely ruined by an unbearably drawn-out game. At first glance Who's Lila? is everything you ever wanted - a great art style, an intriguing title and a genuinely original mechanic make you salivate at the thought of playing it. It's almost like the game promises that you'll have a good time. The first hour delivers on the promise. You are completely drawn in by the emotion-control mechanic. You are forced to enter the mind and body of a psycho, and you like it. Which emotion would I show? Or, more importantly, which emotion would Will show? The story sucks you in. You try your best to decipher everything that the author has to say, having actual fun in the process... ...and that's about it. Everything that happens after the post-purchase euphoria wears off is devastatingly boring. Backtracking is not pleasant. It is not a mechanic a game should be built around. There are some games that make backtracking rewarding - they change the locations you've seen a thousand times and make them more interesting. But in Who's Lila? backtracking is a crucial part of the gameplay. Each time you play, you wake up in the same room. Same Will/Lila. Same objective. Same crows, cawing above the severed body. Same school. Same conversation with Martha. Only God knows how many times I've had the conversation with Martha and Mike just to get a different ending. A different ending that doesn't even change anything! The branching itself only makes this worse. Tiny choices can lock you into completely different endings, often without giving you any indication that you've just made a crucial decision. I couldn't even get the confession ending while following a guide. In a game built around experimentation, making the player afraid to experiment because one wrong expression might mean replaying another chunk of the game is terrible design. Another problem I have with the game is its predictability. I'm not the brightest guy, but the answer to the game's initial and most important question - who's Lila? - was apparent to me after getting my first ending. It was the wheel one. Obviously, any theory should be criticized and questioned, so I kept playing. But the longer I played, the more evidence I got that my first thought was right. I wasn't necessarily expecting a cheap "gotcha" twist. But I did expect the game to eventually challenge my understanding of what I'd seen. Instead, almost every new revelation seemed to elaborate on my original interpretation rather than overturn it. Of course, some might say that Lila explicitly says that she's not Will's alternate personality in a conversation with Detective Yu. She is more like an idea that has many forms and this time she decided to use Will as her vessel. But what changes? What is the fundamental difference between the two explanations? There is none. Nada. It feels less like a meaningful distinction and more like a way for the game to reject the obvious answer without actually replacing it with something fundamentally different. I'm a player. I set out on this journey. I want a reward at the end of it. Either tell me I'm right, or show me that I'm so wrong that it actually blows my mind. The "I am everything and nothing at the same time" answer does neither of these things. Who's Lila? had me terrified of what I would find for the first hour. By the end, the only thing I was afraid of was having to replay the same section again.

imho 7/10

A genuinely unsettling horror mystery featuring an intricate story and unique mechanics.

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