SLENDER THREADS

Another adventure that was in a prominent position in the list of adventures that were being developed for several years, was Slender Threads by the Argentinean developer Blyts. An adventure that we were lucky enough to play its demo/prologue about three years ago, which had created a lot of expectations as to the final result, considering the good track record of the team (see Kelvin and the Infamous Machine). After all, adventures that operate in the realm of psychological horror have a special charm, especially if it has been satisfactorily knitted into the tangle of the plot. Is this true of Slender Threads? Let's find out.

The story begins in the small village of Villa Ventana, where our protagonist is Harvey, a wandering book seller and writer, although the latter cannot be said to be successful. Despite all his efforts, no publishing house has accepted to publish any of his books, a question that has two possible answers: either he has not yet found the right person to appreciate his work or because his stories are simply...terrible. However, his current problem is not so much his non-existent career as a writer as the horrible nightmares he's been suffering from for the past few nights. Nightmares that include the death of himself and some unknown people, who even call him by name.

This situation has brought him to the point of completely losing his mind, especially when in Villa Ventana he encounters even more paranoid incidents, where his nightmares take shape, while some of the townspeople, especially the suspicious sheriff, seem to know more than they claim. So what is the truth in all this and what is the lie? Is there really a fate that determines our lives from the moment of our birth or can we escape it?

We wouldn't want to reveal any more details about the plot, as Slender Threads relies heavily on the mystery surrounding it, to the point that it leaves the player wondering until just before the finale. A finale that will admittedly leave many players with a question mark floating above their heads, as it is, to say the least, unpredictable and subversive. I'd say it reminded me of something from... David Lynch, as much as that sounds like an exaggeration, however that doesn't mean it's anything of the same quality. We will let you be the judge when you get to it, a task that is neither particularly difficult nor time consuming.

Slender Threads takes relatively little time, we estimate that for the average adventurer, it will take around five hours to complete it, which is due to the rather low level of difficulty of the puzzles. Sure, no one likes moon-logic puzzles, which shine through their absence, however in the majority of cases, the next step to move on is obvious or regularly emphasized by Harvey's monologues. It's just possible that we're missing the item we need immediately, so we'll have to search for it, or it's not the right time to do so, with the game preventing us with some kind of artificial obstacle (e.g. workers digging in the road).

The fact that almost the entire Villa Ventana is open for exploration from the start is something that is rare in adventures of this kind. Particularly with the feature that the structure is not "broken" into separate screens (except for two or three crossroads-type points and when visiting a building), but does extensive scrolling, to the point where you think you're playing an action/adventure game. At first, this "freedom" of wandering is a bit scary, but the creators of the game have done a good job in implementing it, on the one hand not letting the player get lost because of a very convenient map (which also has instant fast travel), and on the other hand gradually "opening" more hotspots and buildings to visit, so that everything is neatly arranged. In case we get stuck somewhere, there is a hint system, which helps us by throwing little questions, but never clearly gives the solution. That's something we'll have to figure out for ourselves.

However, this does not prove to be a very difficult process, since, as mentioned above, the challenge of the game is not a tough nut to crack. The design of the puzzles is mainly based on the management of the objects that we will find during our wanderings, combining them with each other or with the environment, and of course there are also puzzles that are completed by giving the appropriate answers through dialogue, although they are less frequent. It's worth mentioning, however, that there are some puzzles that I would describe as imaginative, such as the one in the factory, which is quite difficult to find in a point 'n' click adventure, and a sign that the people at Blyts worked on their game so that it doesn't limit itself to the formalities of the genre.

On the plus side, the game's controls are not exactly the one-click cases we usually witness lately (there are three -usually- verbs when clicking on a hotspot), but they won't trouble any player, while including all the facilities one would expect from a modern adventure (hot-spot indicator, quick travel with double-click, drag & drop move of items in the inventory, etc.). And in the part of atmosphere, which is probably the most important element of a psychological adventure, Slender Threads doesn't slip up, but it doesn't excel either.

Undoubtedly, the eerie shadows, the weird buildings, the sneaky soundtrack (along with the very good voice-over, we might add) and the constant feeling that something is not right in this village, contribute to the feeling of "haunted", while there are a couple of sequences that can make the player feel uncomfortable, especially when a death occurs and Harvey desperately tries to justify it. On the other hand, there are some humorous moments that, while not out of place or in poor taste, combined with the progression of the story and the revelation of what's going on at Villa Ventana, somewhat diminish the sense of "horror" that the creators may have been aiming to set up.

Maybe our expectations were different, based on his demo, but after finishing Slender Threads, we were left with a feeling of unsatisfaction. Mainly because its subversive finale doesn't provide all the answers to what happened at Villa Ventana (perhaps this was done intentionally), to the point where we came to wonder, "oh, is that what it was all about?" For the more observant, there are several elements that deserve attention and connect well to what the game wants to say, especially in the audiovisual aspect, but overall Slender Threads, without being bad by any means, is an adventure that will hardly go down in history as a top representative of the genre.

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