It’s such a tough gig to be an indie VN developer. It’s a niche genre at the best of times, and the resources that you have to dedicate to it are going to be limited. It’s a question of what you throw money into to try to make your project stand out. In the case of The Devil’s Whisper, the big selling point is the voice acting.
Despite being relatively long by indie visual novel standards (about 80,000 words), The Devil’s Whisper has a full, professional voice cast to bring each of the characters to life. They might not have the big-name impact of a Troy Baker or Laura Bailey, of course, but the performances are admirable, and if you imagine this as being like the B-horror films, there’s every chance that some of these voice talents might follow the path of a Jamie Lee Curtis or Kevin Bacon and go from humble horror victim to major star down the track.
It’s just as well the voice acting pulls the heavy lifting to give these characters personality, because they’re not much to look at. It is great that the character art is not AI-generated and it’s always good to see developers giving journeyman artists commissions – God knows there’s enough of them on Reddit, DeviantArt and others trying to get their big break. Projects like The Devil’s Whisper help the artist refine their craft, get some credits going and build from there. Some people will enjoy how The Devil’s Whisper looks, I am quite certain of that. It’s simply not my taste in aesthetics.
On the other hand, the backgrounds were quite nice, and the combination of the music and voice acting helped to set the right tone for what is essentially a teen horror story. After a lengthy intro to set the characters up, the first proper horror moment came when the characters were hooning around like idiot teenagers in a car and happened to crash into a person. When they get out of the car to look for the person, they’re nowhere to be scene. It’s very I Know What You Did Last Summer stuff. The story does diverge from there and is by no means derivative, but it’s clear what sub-genres of horror inspired the writer. The script largely nails the teen horror tropes, across both the annoying and heroic characters, has the right mystery and suspense moments, and has a pay-off worth playing through for.
For the most part, it’s written well enough, too, despite being an enormously difficult genre to work in. With horror there only needs to be one line of dialogue out of place or one character motivation inconsistent for the delicate suspension of disbelief to be shattered. In video games it’s even more difficult because the writer can never quite be sure what the player is doing or the decisions they’ve made, so every thread needs to be carefully balanced. The Devil’s Whisper isn’t perfect in this regard, but it is written with clear intent by an author that clearly cared about what they were writing.
The number of paths through the narrative is also very impressive. The Devil’s Whisper frequently offers players choices about how to have the characters react, and “that decision will have consequences” pops up ominously when those decisions are made. Characters live and die based on these choices, and because you do get a chance to experience the perspective of each character those deaths can be a surprisingly high impact.
The Devil’s Whisper is so niche that as far as I can tell I’m the first one that’s reviewed it, anywhere. Including user reviews on Steam. It’s a pity that it’s going to fly under the radar like that, because it’s a fun blend of a homage to B-horror movies with its own unique identity. It is also clearly a work that the developers cared about a lot, given the effort that went into designing the narrative and the voice acting. I do think the art has let it down and made it difficult to convert people on the Steam page into buyers, but I recommend looking past that, because this is a decent VN worth your time.
