1 
0 It’s the 1970s in southern France in Pierre Feuille Studio’s new detective game Chronique Des Silencieux. You play as Eugène, a young Frenchman who has been sent to Bordeaux to spend some time with his Uncle, who upon arrival you learn has been arrested by the local police. After a quick visit to the local station, Detective Malseki will throw you and Eugène into the police world and set you on the path to becoming Mériadeck’s best private eye.
With your trusty tape recorder in hand and your detective hat on, it’s up to you to solve the many mysteries surrounding the town.
Mysteries, Murders and… a brothel? – Solving the Story of Chronique des Silencieux
Gameplay
Chronique des Silencieux focuses on a point and click exploration of Mériadeck where you will speak to different characters and look for clues that will help you unlock the secrets of the town. You then have to connect the dots and find any discrepancies in witness testimonies to uncover the truth until you can have the final “confrontation” with your key suspect.
To unlock the final confrontation, you will need to put together all of the clues you’ve found, search for discrepancies and put together hypotheses based on what you find. Whilst the way that Pierre Feuille Studio tackled the final confrontation was really interesting, it also can take a lot of brainpower. Unlike many detective games, CDS takes you down to the specifics, making you pick out individual lines from both statements and clues before you can create a real connection. Some may find this to be annoying and I could see how this might take the fun out of the game for some people. I, however, actually really enjoyed the fact that you couldn’t really brute force your way through the game by clicking as many options as possible. The game really does excel at making you feel like a real detective.
Pierre Feuille Studio have recognised that this might be a lot for new or casual gamers and have added a hint system that will point you in the right direction without telling you the answer and ruining the fun. That being said, the hint compass doesn’t follow your game progress and oftentimes when I was after hints, it was giving me solutions to parts that I had already resolved.
They also seem to realise that by going into the specifics, they are also opening themselves up to additional solutions and discrepancies that a player could find so they’ve added a handy feedback button that lets you reach out and make suggestions for the game.
Bugs and Glitches
There were a few occasions during my playthrough where there was inconsistent translations in the subtitle text from French to English and there were a few moments where certain sprites weren’t bright enough making it less obvious where you could or couldn’t go in the game. The developers are aware of these issues and have been updating the game frequently to remove the errors and make the text translations more accurate to the originally intended script.
Graphics & Audio
I adore the art style for Chronique des Silencieux. From the cutscenes to the stills of the characters when you are speaking everything looks really good. There is something about the style of art that makes the game feel so much more intriguing. It plays really well into the overall feel of the game, establishing that idea of the setting being set in the past with traditional buildings and furniture whilst adding to the atmosphere as you search for clues and interview suspects.
The music in the game isn’t anything extravagant or over the top. It does, however, fit perfectly with the art style that the devs had chosen to go with. It’s calm and relaxing as you take the time to find clues. The way Pierre Feuille Studio has chosen to add layers to the music is also interesting! By using your handy tape recorder, you can record the sounds of the town and use them to further your investigation. It’s a really nice way of bringing everything together into one moment. It’s a relaxing time that lets you appreciate every aspect of the game they’ve created.
Longevity
The sheer amount of information you are given in this game is enough of a reason to keep going back and playing, even when you think you’ve found everything. Even with knowing the outcome, I kept going back to replaying the prologue just to try and find more connections and get every possible clue that I could find before doing the final confrontation again. The game lends itself to completionists with achievements dedicated to getting through the different chapters and doing certain tasks, such as completing the chapter without making any mistakes. There’s also the feature that I mentioned earlier where you can suggest your own hypotheses to the developers – this means possibilities really are endless as solutions that you come up with may not be the way that the game is intended to play out.
Final Thoughts
As someone who loves detective games and finding as many clues as possible, playing Chronique des Silencieux was a breath of fresh air in the midst of Sherlock Holmes games. I really enjoyed getting to know the characters, learning more about their stories and finding all the different ways that they linked together. The art style and the music made the game cosy and everything about playing the game was relaxing, even when I was scratching my head, stumped, unsure what to do.
That being said, for players who enjoy games casually the game can be pretty overwhelming with just how much information is given to you. Everything gets down into the nitty gritty and when you first start you are more likely to fail then succeed. Sometimes the smallest piece of information can lead to the biggest breakthrough and it can be pretty disheartening if you spend forever going through the right document but not picking the right line.
It’s a nice change of pace to the games that I’ve been playing recently and I think it’s something that you could easily dip in and out of if you had other games you wanted to play.
Would I recommend Chronique des Silencieux to other people? Definitely. That’s why it’s receiving the Thumb Culture Gold Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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