Game: Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn
Genre: Puzzle, Mystery
System: Steam (Windows) (also available for macOS)
Developers | Publishers: hannahontrek
Controller Support: None
Price: US $19.99 | UK £16.75 | EU € 19,50
Release Date: March 7, 2025
A review code was used, with many thanks to hannahontrek.
Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn is a short mystery puzzle game with a paranormal edge. You are a detective, digging into a ghost that is haunting a small-town inn, and you need to dig deep to find all the secrets.
The Playstyle of Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn
Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn, like many similar titles before it, is in a point-and-click style. You need to interact with the world by clicking, picking up objects, and dropping objects into locations to get all the secrets and solve the mystery. There are tons of puzzles around, and most are solved by paying close attention to objects, papers, and books around you.
Unlike a lot of other similar games I’ve seen around, this one is full voiced acted, similar to many of the Nancy Drew video games floating around out there. In fact, it really felt like Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek in the way you move around the world and the amount of attention you have to pay to everything around you.
The Pros of Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn
This game has a lot of puzzles where the answers to each of the puzzles are close by to the puzzles themselves. This is something I deeply appreciated, as you didn’t really have to run around all over the place to try and solve things. Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn had a lot of interesting puzzles that were challenging and fun to complete.
I also found the music and sound design to be fairly good. The music was pretty chill and the voice actors were fine. I don’t think any of them are award-winning performances, but it was good for an indie game. The sounds in the game were good too, from the key-unlocking sounds to the walking and bike-riding. Overall, it feels like the developers put a lot of effort into making Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn feel good to play.
Not only that, but all the little mini-games were also fun to play. There are at least three little puzzles or games you can play inside of Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn, and none of them matter to the plot. But you still get to try your hand against them if you are up for a challenge, and I think all of them were cute. My favorite was a Duck Hunt-like game where you are a goose throwing eggs at foxes, and it was adorable.
The Cons of Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn
While I liked a lot of the puzzles, there were a LOT of different ways you could die, and there was no indication in-game that you were about to interact with something that could kill you. For example, if you are pumping the wheels of your bike up with the air pump and you get the PSI wrong, you die when you take the bike out for a spin. It’s a little crazy; why would falling off a bike into the grass automatically kill you?
Overall, the puzzles were pretty well done, but there were a lot of moments when I was completely stumped and had no indication of what I was supposed to be doing. There is no in-game hint system and the quests are not super descriptive. I know this is a pretty normal staple of the genre, but it is something I would love to have changed. The thing about in-game hint systems is that, if you want the game to be hard, you don’t have to use them.
Conclusion
Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn is a pretty good game. I am not a huge fan of the genre of mystery point-and-click games, but this one was actually pretty well done. I was surprised at how much of it I played through before remembering I was supposed to be doing a review! Overall, it was a good experience. While I think that those who are experts at this genre will find it a little too simple or easy, I think it’s still worth a play.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot
Do you like our content?
Support LadiesGamers as a member on Patreon!
Or buy us a cup of coffee or tea on Ko-Fi!
