Chronique des Silencieux review

There are countless games out there that task you with playing detective and solving mysteries, but often the amount of actual thought that’s required to do this is limited. We’ve all played a game with “detective vision” that makes important objects shiny, or watched as the character we’re playing as figures out what’s going on while we sit on our backsides. Well if you want to engage your brain and solve a mystery for yourself then Chronique des Silencieux is the game for you, but don’t expect it to be easy.

Our young protagonist Eugene has just lost his mother, and begins the game traveling by train to meet his uncle in 1970s France. When he arrives he finds his uncle in a spot of bother with the police, and the inspector in charge of his case reckons the only one who can prove his innocence is you. With the help of your trusty tape recorder and a bit of brain power you’ll be able to figure out how your uncle got embroiled in the world of gangsters and prostitutes, and will be set on the path that leads to Eugene becoming a private eye.

I really appreciated innocent young Eugene as a protagonist in the first case of the game, but it doesn’t take long for Chronique des Silencieux to launch you five years into the future and get you playing as adult Eugene. You’ll meet a whole host of interesting characters as you investigate crimes as the floppy haired protagonist, from cheeky working girls with hearts of gold to a university professor who’s obviously hiding something.

The beautiful hand drawn world of Chronique des Silencieux is a joy to explore, which is good because you’ll spend a lot of time wandering the streets of southern France as Eugene looking for clues and witnesses. It’s your standard point-and-click adventure game style of gameplay, with a focus on talking to as many people as possible about every talking point relating to the current case.

Whoever you’re spending time talking to, Eugene always makes a point of recording his conversations. This is so he can use his evidence to prove when people are lying to find out more information about a case. In the menus you can access all the conversations you’ve had on the right hand side of the screen, and on the left any documents you’ve gathered are displayed to help find inconsistencies. By dragging a piece of string between two statements that don’t add up you’ll progress the story, but this is easier said than done.

Finding contradictions between evidence and conversations is the first step you need to take to solve a mystery, but you won’t get very far without making deductions. Deductions are illustrated by locks and keys, which you need to combine to create a statement about what has happened. By placing two pictures on the lock and a key in the hole you’ll create a sentence, with the pictures as nouns and the key as the verb in between them to describe the situation. It’s not as complex as it sounds, and as long as you know what’s going on you’ll be able to deduce that someone threatened, murdered or seduced someone else.

All this problem solving and adventure gaming is what you do in the first part of each case, and in the second part you’re expected to show you understand what happened when confronting someone hiding the truth. The intensity really amps up at this point, and you’ll need to have paid attention throughout the case if you want to get through to them. The back and forth is almost reminiscent of Ace Attorney, and just as much of a fun reward for your hard detecting work.

I really don’t have anything negative to say about Chronique des Silencieux, except that you might need to prepare yourself to not get much help while solving the cases. Having to read through pages upon pages of notes and conversations to find potential contradictory statements can feel pretty overwhelming, even if you use the hint system. I understand that the developers were aiming to make a detective game that doesn’t hold your hand, but that approach isn’t going to please everyone. Also, the world also feels a little barren (despite the lovely visuals) when you’re exploring, and Eugene moves a touch too slowly through it. It’s not the biggest of issues, but when you aren’t sure what to do next and checking every area it makes getting from A to B a bit of a chore.

Chronique des Silencieux is a really well made detective game that will delight people who want to solve every single mystery themselves. The French setting is unique and charming, the characters are engaging, and the contradiction-spotting gameplay is great if a little overwhelming. If you like a video game to hold your hand through its story then this isn’t the game for you, but for everyone else this brain teasing adventure is one that’s well worth playing.