As another week comes to an end, it was time to show off another game you might see played during the big Extra Life marathon. And once again the game selected was a smaller one I was able to finish up in one sitting. This time, we are much more homebound, however, as we wander the apartment while home alone. The doorbell may not be working, but that's ok. You are welcome anytime. Come on in.
Story: It all started about a month ago. Leta and Lina had gone out that fateful day to the mountains. Their plan had been simple: go out hiking and take some scenic photos. Unfortunately for them, they found more then nature. Specifically, they found an artifact: a sealed ornate music box. Lina decided since no one was there to claim it, she would take it home... and disappeared soon afterwards. All that was left behind was the box and a photo of her. Being her best friend, Leta took the box home.
That's when the photos started showing up. No matter how many times Leta throws them out, she always finds another of that same picture of Leta in her house somewhere later on. After burning several over the past week, things are starting to tick up a notch as the curse that took her friend now begins to really push into her life and turn it upside down in her own private hell.
There is really little else I can say about the story, as even this is partially from reading the description on the Steam page and embellishing that with interpretations the game offered via in-game details. There is little here that is given as an absolute outside of two potential info-dumps depending on which ending you get, well kind of two endings. But we will get back to that in the gameplay sections. For now all I can say is the story is not very direct and really has no meaning until the very end of the game.
Although that may not be a bad thing in this case. No offense to the developers, but it's pretty obvious English is not their first language. And that is not to say they can't get their ideas across, they do outside of a few weird typos. But their choice phrasing just feels off... sometimes like they want to describe a situation like the character talking is terrified, but the wording feels off enough to ruin the illusion in favor of "well that's strange."
6/10
Graphics: I have to give this game a lot of credit in the visual department. Like many of it's kind, you will play from a third person view as you guide Leta around, but it doesn't aim for photo-realism at all. Rather, you will be met with visuals that seem much more inspired by some combination of classic Pixar films (think Toy Story 2) and Tim Burton's stop-motion animation. Everything has a cartoonish feel to the world, even as it still manages to look gloomy. Toss in some nicely handled shadow and lighting and the mood is set surprisingly well.
Personalizing this mood herself is Leta. Leta is a teenage goth girl, who wanders the halls in a black sweater and worried look that somehow just makes the horror of this world that much more believable. Although sadly that expression won't be in view much (well unless you look in mirrors, anyway) due to seeing the world from behind and over her shoulder. It's just so expressive, right down to her eyes darting around or zeroing in rather then just staring straight ahead like you might expect for a character you really are supposed to be looking at things with rather then looking at. The studio, despite being clearly an indie one, has spent the time to really bring her to life.
Unfortunately, there is really little else in the way of characters they could do this with since the entire game takes place in her apartment where she lives with her mother... and her mother is away at work when all Hell breaks loose. Still I suppose that hellishness is it's own character this time as well, and this also shines through what the game offers. Even the camera choice itself adds to the unsettling nature the game gives. Rather then something standard you might expect, it's ever so slightly rounded, causing the geometry to conform to this view and making everything slightly off-balance in a way that while only really noticeable at the sides of the screen, can be felt in how the whole view is not quite right. Absolutely brilliant choice to make!
However, that is not to say everything is perfect here. Don't get me wrong, this isn't so much the other shoe dropping as some of their choices making technical limitations in the game absolutely impossible to not notice... and all of them come back to that camera. In essence, it's just about glued to Leta's shoulder at a specific distance. You can look up and down and even spin it around her, but the moment you are move, it's right back in that place, obstructing about 1/4th of your camera view with the back of her head... and the very low-grade render of her hair. If her face looks like it could be in a classic Pixar movie, this view shatters that impression instantly, bringing you back to the fact that this is a game that isn't even trying to use up-to-date effects and literally putting it in your face. It doesn't look bad, but it looks old... much older then a game made in 2020 probably should. Nor is that camera done causing trouble. It's stiff hold on location around Leto also lends it to some really odd clipping issues and occasionally getting in the way of navigating the halls of the apartment, but thankfully those situations are much more few and far between.
Overall though, this is some nitpicky things that bothered me for the first section of the game before things took off too much to care. This is definitely a great looking title overall.
7/10
Sound: The soundscape here fairs a bit better then the graphics do. There is no voice work at all in the game, which is probably for the best considering the lines you get when Leto talks to herself I mentioned in the story part of the game, but it also works into the environmental work as well. There is very little music in this game at all, so what you hear for the most part is the world itself, and this the game excels at! From the typing of the keyboard, to things falling (or being thrown?) off shelves, to the thunderstorm outside, to footsteps you can hear moving around beyond the walls of the room you are in, everything about this game's world just sounds right and spooky! it would be a shame to let anything get in the way of that, and the developers knew it! It was good enough I seriously had to wonder while playing why this wasn't made into a VR experience... the sound work was already that good.
9/10
Gameplay: This game is straight up a horror walking-sim. I can not describe it any other way. You will wander around and be allowed to do only a few things: what you need to do to proceed and find the hidden objects in the game which are scattered through the 5 chapters the game is made of. These objects will decide what endings are available to you, although I do not know if you manage to get all of them if the good ending will flow in naturally to make up the final scene. I was unable to do this. What I was able to find, though, is that in the extras menu, once all the items have been collected, the alternate good ending is selectable from there, so no the game doesn't make you replay even a portion if you are just going back to get those. Once you have them all, feel free to quit and go see what you earned.
And this brings up one of those points that just makes this game scream "small indie game" in one of the more annoying ways. The menus do not support mouse control at all. I don't think they support arrow keys either. Rather, they expect you to use the same WASD control scheme you will while playing. This is not a big deal since any PC gamer will feel right at home with this instantly once they get used to the idea that's all you get, but most games generally swap the mouse to a cursor when you open menus (main or option) and return to the way the game controls when you get into or return to the game. This one simply doesn't do that, opting to keep the game-control scheme the same despite the standards set by decades of gameplay.
And let's get to that gameplay now that we've handled the weirder things: there isn't much. Like I said, this is a walking sim, and the game will drag you by the nose from place to place with commands you get in the upper left corner of the screen. Most of the time this is something simple like "go to bed" or "make tea" or "find the sound" and if there is no objective, you will find one soon enough since the apartment really doesn't have a lot of places to get lost in.
But there are two real puzzles in the game before you are done (this is a short game, so I wouldn't have expected a lot of them): a padlock combination and a "rubix cube." The first really disappointed me. Finally I looked at the screen and saw I was going to have to figure something out, only for Leta to blurt out how to get the lock combination rather then let me look at it for a moment and make the connection between the icons at each number and things in the world. The cube was also easy, if not quite so obvious. If you pay attention, the answer is in the puzzle itself and neither has a penalty for getting it wrong. In fact the only penalty in the game at all is that you are denied access to the good ending for not finding all the hidden objects on the way.
I have to be blunt about this: Wire Lips is basically the standard of this type of gameplay and little else. It's not bad, but it's not great either. It's just a vehicle to experience the story and the atmosphere in, and to that end, it does it's job.
6/10
Bugs: While this is not a particularly deep or complex game, it was a technically solid one. There were no bugs in my playthrough.
Score: If you are coming here for the gameplay, you are seriously in the wrong place. This is a walking-sim through and through and will offer very little to actually do. If you are here for a gripping and deep story, you too are in the wrong place. What is here is fine and works well enough, but it's a fairly standard horror story starting with a cursed object and really little to set it apart from other games, books, or movies just like it. However if you are here for the atmosphere, then you are in the right place. Everything else serves this master, and does so exceptionally well. The pacing is perfect and the world feels alive with malice. If that entices you, it's cheap enough to check for yourself at $5... and that's without any of Steam's notorious sales getting involved. But unless that brings you in, you probably want to go play something else instead.
7/10
System Requirements:
- Intel core i5 2300 running at 2.8 Ghz/AMD FX 8120 running at 3.1 ghz
- 4 GB RAM
- Nvidia GT 630 or 650m/AMD Radeon HD6570
- 1 GB hard drive space
- Windows 7/8/10
System Specs:
- Ryzen 7 (5700X) 3.4 Ghz
- 32 GB RAM
- AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT (8 GB VRAM)
- Windows 11 (64 Bit)
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