i make a lot of shitty mods for bad games for one specific friend i have for no reason other then i think it's really funny. i think i'm super hilarious. video games are the only thing i ever think about and so obviously i have aspirations for designing one someday, creating these mods is a good way for me to indulge in that impulse while also not letting me fool myself into putting "makes games sometimes" in my twitter bio. one time i made a house party (2017) mod that had a ton of bespoke, branching paths with unique endings based on really minute player actions and decisions. when i watched my friend play i was in agony seeing how often he had to restart the entire run because it was just impossible to create convenient save points where he could quickly branch the story to a new ending. i think who's lila suffers from this same problem most of it's playtime. you'll end up in the interrogation room for what feels like 2/3s of the endings but the path to getting there has to be meticulously played out ever so slightly differently each time. each time you finish a story you feel like you're building up to a conclusion that ultimately never arrives.
i've never played another game (or read a story or watched a movie for that matter) that parlays this kind of an anticlimax into the main themes in a really elegant way. it's not a particularly revelatory experience, and the whole Deal with the story is kinda obvious and slightly overdone in general. but it wraps itself up nice and feels like it said what it wanted to say and got out. my biggest beef with the whole package is the obsession with working in 'Lynchian' imagery and items for no reason other then this guy probably likes lost highway too much. it's good and normal to draw on your inspirations but at a certain point it dilutes the actual author's voice and style. and i'm just super sick of david lynch i have to be real. he made like one movie that i can fuck with and everything else is just so over referenced and uninteresting.

Awesome Point-and-click, Lynch-inspired horror. A reverse-detective adventure into the dark mind of an individual.

You play as William, a new kid in town who was trouble expressing emotions and making natural faces. Instead of choosing dialogue options, you shape William's face to convey a certain emotion you find appropriate for the situation. The expressions that you pick, combined with your actions, heavily affect the narrative and its endings. Which, there are 15 (16) of them. But, you don't have to get ALL of them to get some enjoyment out of it, necessarily.

The story is pretty cryptic, in a Lynchian way, so don't expect to fully understand it. Although, each ending helps unveils its themes and meanings. The subjects vary from reflections on consciousness, to even paranormal tulpas. It gets pretty meta at times, too. Really worth analyzing.

The visuals are Dither-punk style with fixed camera angles, reminiscent to the Silent Hill games. And while it looks great, it doesn't always work in the game's favor. Some paths and objects are hard to distinguish, and transitions between each angle feel a little clunky to traverse.

And while they nailed the Lynch vibe, and it mostly works, at times it really does feel a little try-hardie or tacked on. Also, I'm not a fan of the ARG side of the game. Just not my thing, personally. Encountered a few bugs, as well, with one of them not letting me progress on the endings. I did found a fix, though.

Great game overall, recommended. I'll increase the rating if the devs fix some of its bugs.

★★★ – Good ✅

Loved the 'Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk' reference too. 😌

What a masterpiece. Wonderful art style, distinctive gameplay and a story that got under my skin.

This game has this really strange, sublime sense of horror - this fog of dread that just hangs over your every move. The surrealism of the plot is paired with a wonderful sort of weirdness and philosophical discussions which makes this experience entirely unique and addicting.

You never really get to know any of the characters. In my opinion, they were surprising, yet vague concepts that have to be explored through interpretation. I feel like this is the kind of game that everyone reads a little bit differently and that's the beauty of it.

Super fun game with unique gameplay! There are multiple endings with this game, and while I didn't get all of them, I did get around 10.

This game is honestly a fun time, and I didn't know it was an ARG as well when picking it up. The puzzles are satisfying, and the story is told in a unique way that gives you the pieces in a bunch of different ways and directions, making you feel like you /might/ know the direction its going in, but you're never quite sure.

I had some issues with finding extra content as well as getting one of the ARG elements to run- but otherwise this is a fun game to pick at when you have the time : ]

wait a second, who's lila again???

i like its vibe and the way the plot can be experienced in a number of ways. the uncertainty this game builds (about who the player is and what occurred before they started watching) is phenomenal, and accomplishes a really interesting feeling of alienation.

i'm going to echo the disappointment about the underutilization of the face mechanic. it's really good! it is just rarely used in a way that matters (and when it does matter, if you fuck it up the game literally tells you to reload your save... ??)

despite that, though, who's lila provides both moments of beauty and horror that really impressed me.

There might be some other modern indie game trying to do what this game does, conceptually and aesthetically. Maybe for not being familiar with such games (I’m mostly playing older games) is why i found “Who’s Lila?” to be fascinating.

If you’re a sucker for games involving philosophical themes, be sure to check this game. It’s topics ranges from subjectivity, representation, time, and narrativity itself. Just like the best horror media, it’s “horror aspects” are put at service of deeper stuff.

This game features 15 different endings. Most of them can be achieved in probably just 5 minutes. Believe me, you HAVE to reach for all the 15 endings to properly experience what the game is trying to do. Anything else i say would definitely spoil the whole thing. I actually reached for 5 endings and had to pause the game for a week due to personal reasons. During that week i couldn't stop thinking about this game. When something resonates so much with you, that's probably what the best art does.

Don’t worry if you need to check on a walkthrough (which is probably the only way of achieving all the endings). It’s definitely worth it.

When I first saw this on the steam homepage, I immediately knew I needed to get it as soon as possible. The style and concept piqued my interest instantaneously, as pixel art/horror is just the coolest thing in the world to me. And I must say, this game was very, very cool. Picture the atmosphere from something like silent hill paired with Lynchian practices in surrealism and interpretation, and you've got this game. The Lynchian inspiration is quite apparent, but honestly didn't bother me at all considering I'm a massive fan of his work and methodology when it comes to curating a surrealistic atmosphere. Thankfully this game did that style justice, with a story so mind-bending and multilayered that it had my head spinning throughout my entire playthrough. The elements of horror are legitimately scary and unnerving, while also being wholly unique for the genre. I swear, the visuals here are so insane and well done that it makes me wanna play through it again already. There's too many good things to mention here, so ill just end by saying that I appreciate that games like these are being made. I think as a medium it's super important to tell interesting stories like this, which is something this game does perfectly. The only other thing ill mention is the central game mechanic of making facial expressions with your character to advance dialogue, its simply brilliant. Oh and the DLC addon "DAEMON" is also such a unique and interesting design mechanic, I only wish it was implemented a bit more. Okay now I'm done I promise lol.

a atmosfera presente é sufocante, uma das experiências metanarrativas mais cativantes e inquietantes que "joguei" nos últimos tempos. um jogo no qual me fez ir além dos seus 20 finais. me aprofundar na filosofia e em como nossa mente é capaz de tornar qualquer coisa em realidade. nessa investigação, você é um aluno do ensino médio com problemas faciais. uma garota desapareceu e a última pessoa que a viu foi você, logo sendo o principal suspeito. o jogo te ensina algumas mecânicas, sendo point-and-click, você controla qualquer reação do personagem pelo mouse. se quiser uma expressão feliz, puxe os cantos dos lábios e sorria. se quer uma expressão de raiva, force as sobrancelhas. porém cuidado, as vezes você não tem controle de tudo quando está nervoso. basicamente, se a estética ditherpunk e a mecânica única de contorcer o rosto despertarem sua curiosidade, além de vibrar com um terror psicológico sutil, pare de ler e experimente. só tome cuidado com ela, não deixe ela existir fora da tela.

English | Español

A point 'n click adventure whose differentiating mechanic is that instead of choosing the answer, we select the facial expression with which we react. Thus weaves a chilling game with multiple endings that works almost like a narrative roguelike.

Una aventura point 'n click cuya mecánica diferenciadora es que en lugar de elegir respuesta, seleccionamos la expresión facial con la que reacionamos. Así se teje un juego escalofriante con múltiples finales que funciona casi como un roguelike narrativo.

Killer art style and some genuinely disturbing moments.

I found the ARG stuff tiresome.

**Edit

Thinking more about this game. I really love what this is going for but one of my difficulties with taking the game on its own merits is having no idea how much game there really is.

The narrative bounties of this game are best when you are able to feast on them all and put them together. After getting like 4 endings I had no idea how long it would take to discover the rest on my own. Heading to a guide unimmersed and disinvested me from the story.

Having the Daemon be part of the game is a novel and interesting idea but ultimately I personally don't have much interest in some unknown quantity of the game being hidden from me. I know secrets and things to discover in games have been a thing forever but I guess I just would like some way to make this stuff more transparent as an option.

For a game summarized as "A reverse-detective adventure, where you control your character's face" I thought there was gonna be a bigger emphasis on the face and the mystery and all that but.. there sadly isn't
Expressions don't matter that much and most of the endings don't involve using them. Those that do, is always during the same specific scene which I genuinely found out to be dissapointing.

Who's Lila? is a game that I was incredibly hyped for. The game is weird, charming and with an interesting gimmick + there's a Daemon! Used to give you clues and context in a cryptic way. I found that really awesome but sadly it's designed for a single ending and by itself, it doesn't add anything to the plot outside of William's room.

While the game definitely nails everything in a visual sense and knows how to make it eye catchy, the actual execution it's incredibly lacking. The story has some really interesting moments, like when you see William at the party.
The game features 16 endings but if we're talking about non repeated content that lasts more than a minute, we're talking about 5 endings at most (don't quote me on the exact amount, It's been a while since I played this). Most of the endings are usually game overs or slight alterations but you still have to go through them to get the "true" "ending".

My problem with all of this is the story. You're almost guaranteed to know the events that truly happened because almost every ending forces you to go through a 5 minute unskippable section every time and while it's cool and incredibly well done, I was so tired of seeing it over and over, specially when it turned out I didn't do it right and I got a repeated ending instead.

The story also touches some meta aspects of it which are incredibly vague. The game just gives you crumbs and adds cryptic shit for the sake of it, just to fuck around with the player and I find that incredibly dissapointing.

Overall if you're gonna play it, play it for the experience, not for the story. That way you might be pleasantly surprised or not instead of feeling dissapointment like I did.

I wasn't gonna recommend this game at first but if I'm truly honest, I love this game. I'm just dissapointed at the wasted potential in delivering a meaningful story because what we got is a video game that tries too hard to be a David Lynch media and if you like the guy and want to play smth like that then it's cool but I just wish there was more and that it didn't suck.

Really cool, really weird little game. This is a game that really benefits from you knowing as little as you possibly can before you play it, so this is the chance to click off if you're curious even though I don't really spoil anything at all in my review.

So with that out of the way here's more of my critiques/thoughts. I'm a little bummed that the face mechanic didn't feature as much as I thought it would--I somehow managed to get like 5 or 6 cards before I ever wound up in the interrogation room. There are a few endings that rely on the faces you pick, but it doesn't ever end up feeling like a "core mechanic" of the game to me in the way that the point and click or the ARG stuff does. Speaking of the ARG elements, at first I thought they were pretty cool since I like that sort of stuff but they did become a little taxing for me once I got further in the game.

I thought the dialogue/translation was a little wonky--there are lots of typos (which is ok, but it was a little jarring with the amount that there are) and the inclusion of tildes during serious/scary moments just kind of made me giggle, which is honestly a shame, because the game can really be genuinely freaky at times. The characters, apart from Lila herself, are sort of whatever--but the game really isn't about them, so it's easy to forgive it for its sort of middling writing of the cast beyond her. It's almost like the game called Who's Lila is about Lila. And it's incredible with posing that question to you and the world she lives in. It's an ode to meta mystery, shared consciousness, personality, and fiction. The visual direction of the game is awesome too!! Truly nothing like it.

The game reminds me of Paranoia Agent a lot. Cool experience, definitely recommend to people who like this sort of stuff. I'll be mulling over the hidden documents and who Lila is for quite some time. Also the Milk Inside a Bag of Milk reference did not go unnoticed, thank you!