Winter Voices: Avalanche

Non, franchement, agréablement surpris par ce RPG d'auteur unique en son genre, et ce, malgré ses multiples faux pas. Probable que Winter Voices ne plaise pas à tout le monde du fait même de sa nature intello-déprimante et par son côté indé cheap, donc il y a un risque à l'achat. Mais pour cinq euros, hein... Ça fera 30 euros la série totale (bientôt dispo pour PC & Mac sur Steam ou sur le site officiel) : vous ne risquez pas grand-chose à vous y essayer.

It’s got firm roots in the point-and-click genre with some turn-based strategy thrown in. However, it seems haphazardly mixed together. The story and environment are interesting but develop so slowly as to be sleep-inducing at times. Visuals go a long way toward keeping one’s attention.

Le prologue de Winter Voices a beau être plein de bonne volonté, on dénombre trop de défauts qui viennent entacher le plaisir. Si l'intrigue trouve immédiatement les mots pour séduire, le système de combat est quant à lui trop mou et trop répétitif quand il n'est pas tout simplement ennuyeux. C'est d'autant plus dommage que l'arbre des talents laisse deviner tout le potentiel du titre. Finalement, Avalanche est là pour essuyer les plâtres, et tout ce que l'on voudrait, c'est pouvoir lui pardonner sa lourdeur et ses défauts en découvrant la suite de l'aventure Winter Voices qui, on l'espère, saura corriger ces points noirs.

Avalanche is decidedly not for everyone, but for all of its roughness around the edges there's an earnestness and intensity that still carries a lot of appeal. If you think you're patient enough to work through the game's foibles, you'll be rewarded, at the very least, with something unique. Although I often found the game frustrating, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what's next.

Winter Voices is sadly too slow and the buildup doesn’t pay off in the end. This is possibly the worst idea for episodic content, as it already takes quite an amount of determination to trudge through just one chapter. Although, if you’re the type of person that enjoys a good 1000-page novel, and you have the fortitude to get through the immensely slow gameplay, you might find this game eerily intriguing.

In the end, despite the inkling that the designers had a couple of good ideas rattling around in there somewhere, Winter Voices simply fails to be much fun. Perhaps later iterations in the series will polish the AI, make combat more exciting, and fix the writing… but we doubt it.

It’s all a shame, because Winter Voices’ first episode has some moments of sparkling brilliance, combining the low-tech hand drawn artwork with the odd inspired moment of effective writing. Then, it goes right back into miring itself in as many ways as possible. Poor pacing, boring battles and mountains of pretentious prattling more suited to an art house coffee shop after hours. The game tries -- it really tries -- to take the gamer on an intellectual ride, to sell us its world, its setting and its misery. But in doing so, it often forgets that it’s meant to be a functioning game underneath all this.