Scholar Adventure: Mystery of Silence

https://youtu.be/OGIWl7s_-vs Providing little insight into player or protagonist goals it's a slow meagering hunt for ways to progress.

I agree with other reviewers - Mystery of Silence is short (about an hour and half to 100%). Worse, if you've played the demo, you've already played about 70% of the game. And the remaining 30% is much rougher: the narrative feels rushed and there are some bugs (or maybe just poor / lazy design - like Graver turns up in too many places at once). It's also a victim of purple prose, text that feels like it's trying hard to be deep and the result is meaningless noise. (Maybe Silence would have been redemptive here after all? Anyway.) As others have noted, the story doesn't really hold together. The ending leaves too much just boringly unresolved (rather than ambiguous on purpose, which is I think what it's trying for). At some point, Graver claims he's buried others who came to solve the mystery, but that's hard to believe given the horror is mostly atmospheric and the NPCs generally seem to keep to themselves and very little is every clarified about what actually happened / is happening. Also agree as others have noted that the scissors bit and the rock-paper-scissors moment feel dropped in from an entirely different game and genre. Ultimately: short, decent enough atmosphere, but not worth the sticker price especially if you got your hands on the demo. The story answers few if any of the questions it raises and the back third of the game really shows the seams.

Mystery of Silence is a short point & click adventure that for the most part is relatively easy to play. The atmosphere is appropriately spooky, but the game shoots itself in the foot a little bit with a main character that reacts too joyful and unimpressed to most of the things he is seeing or experiencing. Some of the puzzle solutions are a bit silly and seem to belong in a different game as well, e.g. the part with the scissors or the rock-paper-scissors mini game. The game also stays fairly one-dimensional the whole way, since most of the NPCs will not speak and the story is lacking in exposition and motivation. In fact, the motivation for William's actions remains largely a mystery as well. He is doing things because we, the player, want to progress the game, not because there is a logical explanation for what he is doing. Overall, I wasn't bored, so the game is not bad by any means. However, it is 8€ if not on sale and at best a little over an hour long with no replay value, so that knocks off a few points in my book. There are just so many other great, spooky p&c adventure games for the same price or just a bit more, which offer much more story and satisfaction. Maybe this was the developer's first game, then this is a good start, but it is still too pricy for what it ultimately has to offer.