Winter Voices
Once upon a time, there was an unlucky girl.
~Rule of Rose
Steam library is full of hidden gems. And today, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll tell you about one of them. Winter Voices. An episodic RPG from a small team of talented French people. By looking on screenshots, you, probably, already got some impressions about what this game may be, but let me tell you something – forget it. Winter Voices is not what it seems (Twin Peaks pun intended).
First of all, battles in this game… are not really battles. Even though they’ll look a lot like our usual TBS battles and there’ll be a lot of various skills to learn, the “battles” here feel more like puzzles. Sounds weird and, well, it is. Even though I’ve finished thousands of games in my life, I don’t think I remember anything like that. Your character will have proper TBS-like stats, HP and skills, but you’ll rarely get a chance to directly attack your enemies and the goals will rarely ask you to kill something. Most of the time you’ll need to avoid the enemies, or push them to achieve certain goals. Which can be tricky. To say the least. The “battles” may be pretty hard and confusing, but I ended up liking them a lot. Because of how challenging they were, because of how different they were and, of course, because of the story.
– Real player with 133.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Isometric RPG Games.
Winter Voices is an indie text heavy RPG a bit akin to Planescape: Torment, but also very different. Its strongest point is its fairly linear psychological and existential story centred on some of the darker aspects of us humans, but ultimately it’s an experience of struggle, development, hope and growth; made with psychological insight. Next its “combat” encounters and its weakest the free roam hub-sections like the starting village. The game has a lovely artistic vision and ambience created by its hand-in-hand art direction, soundscape and writing. Which all have a wonderful poetic feel and are tied into the “combat system” beautifully. Plus if you are fond of metaphorical writing in works like “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” by Nietzsche, then you’re bound to find the dream sequences interesting, as they employ metaphors to great effect. That said the English translation can be a bit iffy, so play it in its native French if you can.
– Real player with 56.4 hrs in game