seriously the coolest shit ever. i do wish the game gave you some sort of pointers so that discovering all the endings wasn't something that either requires a guide or takes way too long but everything else is so fantastic that i can forgive it
Redefined for me what horror can be. I only wish the mystery had unravelled more slowly and the face modification mechanic had been more core to the gameplay
Juego curioso. Mola ir descifrando el misterio poco a poco pero la mecánica de hacer manualmente los gestos de la cara (el principal atractivo del juego) aunque es original se podría haber aprovechado MUCHO más.
Ignorando eso, como juego de terror está chulo. Por momentos se siente casi como un escape room.
Ignorando eso, como juego de terror está chulo. Por momentos se siente casi como un escape room.
David Lynch would be proud.
This review contains spoilers
oughhhhh i love games with immense and incomprehensible lore. this game is so fun and as per i looove a game w tons of endings!!!! esp when theres a completionist ending... had to edit my save file to get both hierophant endings and 100% the game which is frustrating but i didnt mind that much! i love the stuff it does w ur computer such as needing to corrupt the save file, needing to check tanyas twitter, looking at the carrd... very arg-ish, its super cool!! i have so many theories and questions and i cant decide whether i want to KNOW the answer or not. im also generally really good with horror but this game genuinwely frightened me - not because of either jumpscare, or the murder, or anything, quite simply Just the unsettling atmosphere had me shaken and looking over my shoulder. really impressive!!!! i HAATED the scenes where u used wasd (/pos) the break in point-and-click felt really offputting and made it all the more scary. altogether really great and underrated game!!! only part i didnt enjoy was trying to escape strepnov, i found it rlly hard and got stuck for ages, but thats prob more user error LOL
- Weird, Interesting, and actually intriguing to play.
- Hard to actually understand what the game wants from you at the start but gets more clear as you play.
- The style was unique but got hard for me to look at the more i played, i had to take breaks to play this.
- Hard to actually understand what the game wants from you at the start but gets more clear as you play.
- The style was unique but got hard for me to look at the more i played, i had to take breaks to play this.
I really love this game, puzzle solving with a philosophical mystery. One of my favourite games and developers, I hope Garage Heathen produces more games in the future.
shat my pants
For years, I have had this gut feeling that at some point the other shoe is gonna drop and everyone is gonna realize I'm a total fucking fraud. Luckily no one has yet, but this game really spoke to me!
No debería ser obligatorio tener que sacar todos los finales para el true ending porque pasa de ser un juego fresco y divertido a un tedio.
Who is Lila é o mais próximo que posso descrever de um jogo pós moderno, que aborda tópicos existenciais e filosóficos de maneira fantástica. A minha única crítica ao jogo é que certas partes, como a de perseguição ou de procurar a sala da Martha, são chatas em segundas jogatinas mas fora isso nenhuma parte do jogo foi chata para mim. Alguns dos melhores momentos que eu já tive em um jogo estão atrelados a Who is lila, desde o final do hierofante inteiro até o segredo de quem é a Lila, esse jogo é uma obra de arte.
Porém, devo temperar esses elogios com uma crítica. Algumas das conquistas do jogo são extremamente obtusas, uma exigindo que você corrompa um arquivo e, pra platinar, você precisaria resetar seu save pois uma conquista é mutuamente exclusiva com outra. Sim, isso faz parte do estilo do jogo de certa forma, especificamente o aspecto de não platina e devido às conquistas “get tricked” e “Clever One”, porém o fato que eu estou criticando isso mostra o quão bom o jogo é em te fazer querer ver tudo que ele têm disponível.
Porém, devo temperar esses elogios com uma crítica. Algumas das conquistas do jogo são extremamente obtusas, uma exigindo que você corrompa um arquivo e, pra platinar, você precisaria resetar seu save pois uma conquista é mutuamente exclusiva com outra. Sim, isso faz parte do estilo do jogo de certa forma, especificamente o aspecto de não platina e devido às conquistas “get tricked” e “Clever One”, porém o fato que eu estou criticando isso mostra o quão bom o jogo é em te fazer querer ver tudo que ele têm disponível.
This review contains spoilers
Honestly, a little disappointed, which is really weird to say. This sort of meta-mystery would be RIGHT up my alley it feels, and while the ideas are really fun, idk why, but it just doesn't click that excitement in me. Which again seems crazy, because I'm SO for "Game is a commentary about the meaning of consciousness, tulpas, the birth of an idea", the meta-bullshit, the fact that Lila is simply the game, the thought of her, a creation made to be furthered and to live inside each of our minds. But it's like, I've seen this before. I've pursued games and movies and stuff like this to where I've seen all the tricks it pulls already, which is very much a ME issue. I think this will be a game that occasionally comes up and I go "oh yeah, I liked the first few hours, but getting some of the endings was a slog". Idk, weird that I'm saying this. I'm definitely happy that I played it, and I'm almost frustrated with myself for not liking it more. I think I may come around more on it later though
This review contains spoilers
Truly accurate weird guy high school experience. This is what it's like folks
I really enjoyed this! I have some problems with it but I'll get into those in a bit. This is actually my second time posting this- I initially felt a little embarrassed posting this because it's pretty personal wrt how I connected with the game but fuck it. First, I wanna say why I really love Who's Lila, and felt weirdly seen by it. and in that it's just really aesthetically lovely.
There's a Jacob Geller video that some of this will probably sound a bit redundant next to, but I think for me Who's Lila's hit the "fear of losing control" mark a little differently and in a way that felt deeply cathartic. This game pokes at a LOT of my specific fears from growing up with some William-esque social deficits, and I think that's why it struck a chord with me- being misunderstood because of how I might express an emotion in a way that seems odd and of social interaction feeling like a game of delivering an "expected" response is kinda just what it's like when you've got that spectrum swag. Actively having to fight the way my brain wants me to talk and act, being worried that I'd offend someone with a strange noise or mannerism that was misread- these were the things that kept me awake and made life feel impossible when I was a little younger than William. It also can create a real sense of alienation when your school life feels like a social minigame- Will's intentional self-isolation and his need to construct a companion to keep him company feel like familiar concepts to me. I used to project thoughts onto my dog and guinea pig and have back-and-forths with them when I was too exhausted to actually talk to people, at least until I couldn't stop imagining them threatening me and had to stop. Coincidentally, Who's Lila has a scene that reminds me of this to a T when William and Lila are talking about the nature of the mind and she starts intentionally making him freak out.
Guess what I'm saying with all this is that Who's Lila feels like it taps into the fear of having a mind/thoughts that can work in ways you don't want them to very well. The autism/social anxiety parallels are pretty clear, but I also spent a lot of my early teenage years with overwhelming harm OCD- this fear that there was something inside me that would take control of my body and make me do some Martha's Apartment shit to my loved ones or peers. It got to the point where I would deliberately try not to be too physically close to people just so I wouldn't risk suddenly snapping someone's neck as I walked by. Who's Lila plays into that fear of hurting others and of being unable to do anything about it- to suddenly have something akin to Lila enter you, an intrusive thought that actually has power, and that's trying to replace you. I was in Will's position in some ways in High School, and these thoughts and images in my head felt like they were bleeding into me and were going to kill me. It's terrifying, and I think 14 year old me maybe would have benefited from seeing a game that captures that feeling so well, even if it wasn't the creator's intent.
"Yeah I constantly have uncontrollable, extremely distressing thoughts about murdering people in violent, horrific ways and perform rituals that I think are keeping me from acting on them" is not a feeling that's easy to talk to if you've never been told it's just the symptoms of a pretty common mental illness. I don't think Who's Lila is "about" OCD, much less the specific kind I have- but the way it dis-empowers the player and constantly reminds them that we are puppeteering a teenage boy's body and making it do horrible things really resonated with me and made for effective horror. The scenes with The Stranger feel particularly representative of this, especially the one in the Lovers ending. Just played out exactly how my nightmares from around that time of my life did. "You look very cute today. Don't scream." Being taken over by your own thoughts and made to do something horrible, presented nightmarishly. Genuinely gave me chills.
Moving away from why the game hit so hard for me and into some more general stuff; the dithering is both a really clever choice to mask the extremely low-detail models and to lend the game a ton of style- just gives it this hazy, dreamlike feeling that creates a constant alienation and that's backed up by the eerie, spacious soundscapes. The bizarre environments and characters you meet are immediately memorable and striking; shoutout to the Stranger. I love the Stranger. Captures the feeling of the Mystery Man without just ripping off Lost Highway entirely.
I do have some minor grievances with the game's writing- not problems with the themes or plot, but in the way it expresses them. GarageHeathen had, in my opinion, a pretty singular vision here, but I think there's occasionally an unfounded lack of confidence in the extremely effective mechanical and visual storytelling to get those themes across. There's a lot of expository text in Who's Lila, and there were a few times that it felt like characters were re-clarifying things that were hinted at in different endings. I don't think Who's Lila is pretentious or "fake deep", because it does have something to say and I think that thing is interesting- but it sometimes feels like the dialogue is actively trying to prove that to me- that yes, these symbols and concepts mean something! I don't think that's necessary. The storytelling here is strong but part of me wishes the visual/mechanical elements were able to speak for themselves just a tiny bit more. That said, I think Who's Lila is genuinely fascinating. It affected me and I think you should play it if it looks even vaguely interesting to you and you're down for a one-player ARG point'n'click
I really enjoyed this! I have some problems with it but I'll get into those in a bit. This is actually my second time posting this- I initially felt a little embarrassed posting this because it's pretty personal wrt how I connected with the game but fuck it. First, I wanna say why I really love Who's Lila, and felt weirdly seen by it. and in that it's just really aesthetically lovely.
There's a Jacob Geller video that some of this will probably sound a bit redundant next to, but I think for me Who's Lila's hit the "fear of losing control" mark a little differently and in a way that felt deeply cathartic. This game pokes at a LOT of my specific fears from growing up with some William-esque social deficits, and I think that's why it struck a chord with me- being misunderstood because of how I might express an emotion in a way that seems odd and of social interaction feeling like a game of delivering an "expected" response is kinda just what it's like when you've got that spectrum swag. Actively having to fight the way my brain wants me to talk and act, being worried that I'd offend someone with a strange noise or mannerism that was misread- these were the things that kept me awake and made life feel impossible when I was a little younger than William. It also can create a real sense of alienation when your school life feels like a social minigame- Will's intentional self-isolation and his need to construct a companion to keep him company feel like familiar concepts to me. I used to project thoughts onto my dog and guinea pig and have back-and-forths with them when I was too exhausted to actually talk to people, at least until I couldn't stop imagining them threatening me and had to stop. Coincidentally, Who's Lila has a scene that reminds me of this to a T when William and Lila are talking about the nature of the mind and she starts intentionally making him freak out.
Guess what I'm saying with all this is that Who's Lila feels like it taps into the fear of having a mind/thoughts that can work in ways you don't want them to very well. The autism/social anxiety parallels are pretty clear, but I also spent a lot of my early teenage years with overwhelming harm OCD- this fear that there was something inside me that would take control of my body and make me do some Martha's Apartment shit to my loved ones or peers. It got to the point where I would deliberately try not to be too physically close to people just so I wouldn't risk suddenly snapping someone's neck as I walked by. Who's Lila plays into that fear of hurting others and of being unable to do anything about it- to suddenly have something akin to Lila enter you, an intrusive thought that actually has power, and that's trying to replace you. I was in Will's position in some ways in High School, and these thoughts and images in my head felt like they were bleeding into me and were going to kill me. It's terrifying, and I think 14 year old me maybe would have benefited from seeing a game that captures that feeling so well, even if it wasn't the creator's intent.
"Yeah I constantly have uncontrollable, extremely distressing thoughts about murdering people in violent, horrific ways and perform rituals that I think are keeping me from acting on them" is not a feeling that's easy to talk to if you've never been told it's just the symptoms of a pretty common mental illness. I don't think Who's Lila is "about" OCD, much less the specific kind I have- but the way it dis-empowers the player and constantly reminds them that we are puppeteering a teenage boy's body and making it do horrible things really resonated with me and made for effective horror. The scenes with The Stranger feel particularly representative of this, especially the one in the Lovers ending. Just played out exactly how my nightmares from around that time of my life did. "You look very cute today. Don't scream." Being taken over by your own thoughts and made to do something horrible, presented nightmarishly. Genuinely gave me chills.
Moving away from why the game hit so hard for me and into some more general stuff; the dithering is both a really clever choice to mask the extremely low-detail models and to lend the game a ton of style- just gives it this hazy, dreamlike feeling that creates a constant alienation and that's backed up by the eerie, spacious soundscapes. The bizarre environments and characters you meet are immediately memorable and striking; shoutout to the Stranger. I love the Stranger. Captures the feeling of the Mystery Man without just ripping off Lost Highway entirely.
I do have some minor grievances with the game's writing- not problems with the themes or plot, but in the way it expresses them. GarageHeathen had, in my opinion, a pretty singular vision here, but I think there's occasionally an unfounded lack of confidence in the extremely effective mechanical and visual storytelling to get those themes across. There's a lot of expository text in Who's Lila, and there were a few times that it felt like characters were re-clarifying things that were hinted at in different endings. I don't think Who's Lila is pretentious or "fake deep", because it does have something to say and I think that thing is interesting- but it sometimes feels like the dialogue is actively trying to prove that to me- that yes, these symbols and concepts mean something! I don't think that's necessary. The storytelling here is strong but part of me wishes the visual/mechanical elements were able to speak for themselves just a tiny bit more. That said, I think Who's Lila is genuinely fascinating. It affected me and I think you should play it if it looks even vaguely interesting to you and you're down for a one-player ARG point'n'click