Chronique des Silencieux is a point-and-click adventure game set in 1970s France. It features a lot of unique mechanics and manages to make one of gaming’s oldest genres feel fresh again, but unfortunately, it’s let down by poor and unpolished implementation. Here’s our Chronique des Silencieux Review.

Story

In Chronique, you take on the role of 15-year-old amateur sleuth Eugène Faury, who is returning to the French town of Bordeaux in search of his uncle, Flavio. Your search leads you to Pays de Galles, which you first think is a simple antique furniture store until all of the lovely ladies and their boss, Madame Solange, give you other ideas. That’s right – it’s a brothel.

The overarching story is good. There are members of the criminal underworld, a backstory of World War Two resistance fighters, murder, and more. You’ll stumble across all of this as you interact with the intriguing residents of Bordeaux. Chronique des Silencieux does a great job in the story aspect. It creates an interesting, living world that is fun to explore. 

Features and Mechanics

However, this French adventure quickly goes downhill regarding practical gameplay. See, as an amateur sleuth, you’re supposed to piece the story together by reading the transcripts of what people have said to you about other individuals and events and then connecting them – via a kind of red string from a corkboard – to letters and evidence you’ve found. 

But this doesn’t work as well as it could. Games like Ace Attorney feature similar crime-solving mechanics, but they are limited in their scope so as to not become overwhelming. In Chronique des Silencieux, the gloves come off and you’re given transcripts of every conversation you’ve ever had with everyone in full. 

That means that you have to trawl through what people have said – important or not – and then read all of the letter evidence you’ve picked up too. Then, when you think you’ve found a connection, you select a sentence from each and inevitably get it wrong, leading to a frustrating gameplay loop.

See, you’ll get it wrong because a lot of the plot points are either hard to follow or comprehend. This is due to poor English text that has lots of spelling and grammar mistakes to the point that you lose the meaning of what people are saying and what is happening. There’s also a mechanic that asks you to form a “hypothesis” about two characters and the action that links them, symbolised by a padlock and key. You drag two character portraits onto the padlock and choose the key labelled with the action that links them to progress at major points, however, this too is just as convoluted with endless options. 

In Chronique des Silencieux, You’ll find yourself frequently stuck or lost, scratching your head and wondering how to progress because things simply make no sense. Chronique des Silencieux’s gameplay simply isn’t fun at all. If the developers had simply restricted the answers and streamlined the experience a little more, this could have been an amazingly innovative adventure.

Graphics and audio

The saving grace for this adventure is in its graphics and audio. Bordeaux is rendered in gorgeously bright pastels, characters are well animated and drawn, and running through the city’s cobbled streets of the 1970s and meeting the local market traders is simply stunning. Seriously, it’s top-notch work.

And the audio is just as good. From the great soundtrack that accompanies your sleuthing to the hustle and bustle of the city streets, Chronique des Silencieux has an excellent audio design that really stands out.

Conclusion

Chronique des Silencieux could have been an adventure game with few rivals. It has beautiful graphics, excellent audio, and it’s absolutely full of innovative ideas. Overall, it has an interesting story and premise, but confusing gameplay mechanics are too in-depth and ruin what Chronique des Silencieux could have been.