Speak No Evil

A forewarning before this review begins. Speak No Evil is not a game for everyone. It has an extraordinarily high learning curve and is incredibly unforgiving. However, if you’re up to the challenge it can be quite an exhilarating experience.

In a world composed entirely of MS Paint, typical teen Alex has a fight with his mother and storms off to hang out with his girlfriend, Nicole. They watch a few movies together uneventfully, until midnight rolls around, at which point the world ends, and the couple finds themselves surrounded by hordes of screeching demons. And I do mean hordes. The creatures demonstrate the power to steal a person’s voice, rendering Alex a mute, but fortunately this also seems to give Alex and Nicole a variety of elemental magic abilities that prove very effective at combating the horde of Unspeakable horrors. The two set off on a daring escape, but can they survive?

Probably not, as it turns out.

Balance 3.5/5:

As I already mentioned, battles can be extremely brutal, especially in the beginning before you have found useful items or learned important skills. Getting lucky with drops early on is important, and learning which items are useful and how to use them is essential. Blundering through boss fights is simply not possible, you will often have to fight them several times to learn their strategy and equip yourself properly to counter it. But there is always a way to survive. Hitting an enemy with their elemental weakness is incredibly effective, typically annihilating most enemies outright. Alex also starts the game with devastating light and dark spells that can kill almost anything with a low chance of success, meaning you can destroy almost anything if you can survive long enough. However, the game suffers some serious flaws. Although you fight the same groups of enemies through the whole game, only two sprites are used on the game’s map screens, meaning you can almost never tell what an enemy is before fighting it. Since you can set elemental affinities to your weapon, you could properly prepare for a fight ahead if you knew what you were fighting, but as of now these groups tend to be random, meaning that it is impossible to prepare as thoroughly as you could be able to.

Finally, if you search in the right places, a few surprises might be waiting for you….

Level Design 3/5:

Enemies are absolutely everywhere in this game, so on virtually every map there is at least some necessity to avoid enemies instead of fighting everything. Some maps do a good job letting you be evasive, but some are simply too crowded to effectively avoid anything. Fortunately, doors are often effective roadblocks, since enemies cannot open them. Other than avoiding enemies, most levels require you to search for keys to open locked doors, though this rarely requires you to search far. Other levels might have you searching for supplies are the like, but overall there is little variety.

The entirely custom tilesets are a perk, most of them look decent enough and all objects are recognizable.

Characters 2.5/5:

Although Alex is struck mute near the beginning of the game, his actions and gestures still characterize him effectively. Most of the other characters are lackluster, and the “Silenced Ones” tend to be severely lacking in enough characterization to effectively evoke any sorts of emotional response to their plights. The dialogue tends toward being dry and suffers from an overabundance of vulgar language, one of my pet peeves. But it isn’t unsalvageable. This wouldn’t be a problem but you’re forced to listen to the dialogue a lot.

Storyline 3/5:

It’s the end of the world and a rag-tag group of misfits try to survive as best they can. A pretty typical but serviceable plot. In this case, each survivor has a connection to a family member or other significant figure in their life who has been “silenced,” and by seeking out these Silenced Ones, they are each able to conquer their own personal demons. An interesting idea, but the characterization of most of the silenced ones tends to hold this potential back.

Music and Sound 4/5:

Featuring an almost entirely custom soundtrack, Speak No Evil makes heavy use of techno-sounding battle themes and the music generally manages to be fitting and evocative in most scenes. The quality of the soundtracks is excellent and gives the game a great sense of consistency.

Overall 3.5/5:

With its almost entirely unique resources and twisted, difficult appeal, Speak No Evil might just be the challenge you’re looking for. People who are easily frustrated should stay far, far away, because you will die. A lot. Not for the faint of heart.

Note to developers: I ran into several potentially game-breaking bugs while playing that I had to use the editor to get around. This game is in pretty serious need of a bug test.