Whispering Willows is a 2D side-scrolling adventure game. Elena’s father John Elkhorn, the groundskeeper of a mansion, has gone missing. In her dream Elena sees he is snatched by a creature. She goes to the mansion to investigate herself, wearing her father’s amulet, but once through the gate a ghostly creature appears and she falls down a hole.
The game consists of four chapters where Elena travels through the environment and solves puzzles to progress. She can move around and crawl. Whenever she passes something interesting a text description appears over it. She can also pick up items and store them in an inventory to solve puzzles. Conversations are displayed as text and as the story progresses Elena’s thoughts are stored in a diary as well as information about the different characters stored as notes. She can activate special powers through the amulet. It glows in the presence of spirits and allows her to leave her body and explore the environment in a spirit form. This technique is used often to reach places that are otherwise inaccessible as she can fly and fits through small cracks. Glowing objects can be possessed in spirit form to manipulate them. Eventually she always needs to return to her body to progress. Along the way she meets many spirits she can talk to. The game has a linear design, but there is a large environment to explore to fit the pieces together.
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