During the day the forest is calm and peaceful. It is during the night that you hear the roars...of monsters.
Silentown is a small village located deep in a forest inhabited by monsters. Despite the threat of danger, the villagers live their lives as peacefully as they can, strictly following rules so as to not provoke the monsters’ wrath and keep their town safe. Even so, every now and then people suddenly disappear under mysterious circumstances, never to return.Lucy, a young girl growing up in Silentown, lives a relatively happy life with her family, but has always wondered what had become of those who disappeared. The day will soon come when Lucy will act on that curiosity and investigate, but is she prepared for what she will discover…?
Children of Silentown is a Point-and-Click Adventure Game developed by Elf Games and published by Daedalic Entertainment. The game was released on January 11, 2023 on PC, and was later ported to the Nintendo Switch, PS4 and PS5, and Xbox Series X and Xbox One.
Tropes featured in this game include:
- Beautiful Singing Voice: Lucy has one, as well as her mother Eloise, who taught her how to sing.
- Butt-Monkey: Silver is this among the other kids. He’s treated like a gofer by Red and Black who assign him twice to lookout duty while they get up to mischief, during the Hide and Seek game he ends up picking a spot that can be seen without even having to move, and there is a dialogue option in which you can have Lucy kick him in the shin.
- Colorful Theme Naming:
- All of the boys in Silentown are named after a color, which also matches their hair: Blue, Silver, Red, and Black.
- The other girls, Sunny and Raven, also follow this pattern as Sunny is blonde and Raven has black hair.
- While he’s not a human, Coal, the Woodworker’s dog, also has dark fur.
- Don't Go Into the Woods: One of the cardinal rules of Silentown, the villagers are forbidden from going into the woods. However, there is an exception with the village’s Woodworker, who goes to the forest during the day to gather wood.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: At the end of Chapter 3, at the request of her father, Lucy gives up singing. While this is temporary, the player can’t use any of Lucy’s songs during the start of Chapter 4.
- Guide Dang It!: Acquiring the fourth song, the Song of the World, requires performing three specific optional actions across the game to discover their notes. The only hint you get of its existence is that there’s space for a fourth song in Lucy’s journal, though the three notes do appear in chronological order relative to when the others are found.
- Last-Second Ending Choice: The final choice you make determines which of the game’s Multiple Endings you get, depending on which song Lucy sings to try and defuse the standoff between the town and herself with her new monster friend.
- Let the Past Burn: In Chapter 4, with the Woodworker having disappeared, Red’s dad is cleaning out what’s left behind by burning the Woodworker’s work station and any of his products that remain.
- Magic Music: The songs Lucy learns lean into this, allowing her to convince others to share their thoughts or to see memories associated with certain objects. After Lucy goes to the forest, the effects of the songs change and embrace this fully, allowing her to control certain plants, as well as learning her third song from the forest that allows her to reveal invisible objects.
- Mini-Game: During the investigation in Chapter 3, to get Red and Black to share what they know, Lucy needs to beat them in an animal race. The race is done through either Button Mashing or Timed Presses, depending on which animal you’re controlling.
- Missing Child: Luca, the baker’s son, is one of many villagers who have gone missing, the newest one by the time the game begins. True to the trope, pictures of him and the other missing villagers are placed on a bulletin board in the town square, and also on the outside walls of where they lived.
- Missing Mom: At the end of Chapter 2, Lucy’s mom Eloise disappears during the night.
- Nice Day, Deadly Night: Going out at night in Silentown is forbidden, as that is when the forest monsters appear to be the most active.
- Multiple Endings: There are four endings to this game, as mentioned in Last-Second Ending Choice above:
- Singing the Children’s Song lets Lucy’s song reach through to the other children, spurring them to get Lucy’s father to stand down and recognize his daughter. Lucy returns to Silentown but the tensions between the villagers and the monsters remain. However, Lucy dedicates her life to breaking down the walls by rebuilding the school and becoming its new teacher, and teaching what she’s learned to all who will listen, which appears to be a substantial number of people.
- Singing Mom’s Song causes Lucy’s father to recognize not just Lucy, but the monster at her side, who turned out to be Eloise all along. The three of them return to Silentown, but Eloise looks back towards the forest, thinking on the life she is giving up in doing so.
- Singing the Song of the Forest causes Lucy’s song to fall on deaf ears, as the villagers refuse to hear the songs of monsters. At the same time, it is revealed to the player that the monster by Lucy’s side is actually Eloise. Heartbroken, Lucy flees to the forest, but ends up becoming a monster as well and is able to find solace with her mother and others in their new life of freedom as monsters.
- Singing the hidden Song of the World allows Lucy to choose a different option, using that song to break down and remove what had divided the villagers and the monsters. Both Silentown and the forest fade away, and the monsters’ forms fade to reveal all of the missing villagers. Led by Lucy, they are brought together in this space of emptiness, forming the start of an uncertain, yet hopeful future.
- Otherworldly Communication Failure: At the end of Chapter 4 when Lucy returns from the forest, she finds herself unable to understand the villagers when they speak to her. While she doesn’t realize it at first, it is clear from their reactions to what she is saying that they cannot understand her either.
- Relationship Values: While hidden from the player, Lucy’s interactions with the other children play into this for a specific scene in Chapter 5, along with a couple of achievements associated with that event: The “Friend” achievement requires you to maximize these for one of the other children by making all the right choices for that child. Not maximizing any of them instead unlocks the “Cat” achievement.
- Stealth-Based Mission: The later part of Chapter 4 becomes one, where Lucy must make it through the forest back to Silentown while avoiding the gaze of a giant monster.
