Winter Light: Where Silence Says It All is a quiet experience that prioritizes atmosphere and emotion over traditional gameplay. Rather than offering challenges or puzzles, it invites players to slow down and absorb a rich narrative – but be warned, this comes with a lot of reading.
Set in a stark, snow-covered environment, the game uses mostly static visual images and a quiet set of sound effects to set the mood.
Interaction is extremely limited. Players move through the environment by selected text options via dialogue. You can ‘speed run’ the game be just repeatedly clicking, but then that isn’t really the proper or intended experience.
The big theme here is loneliness, and the sound design plays a crucial part in supporting this narrative. Silence dominates the experience, broken only subtle ambient noises such as wind and footsteps. It reminded me a bit of the film, No Country for Old Men in which those limited audio elements therefore become very loud.
Winter Light: Where Silence Says It All is brief, but best enjoyed as an experience rather than a ‘game’. You can easily finish it in an evening but you’ll probably want a bit of time to sit and digest it.
Reviewed on Xbox Series X
