Developed/Published by: Deconstructeam, Selkie Harbour
Released: 29/04/2025
Completed: 23/08/2025
Completion: …
Fuckin’ hell.
The last couple of years have been incredible for shorter narrative video game experiences, and in a weird sort of way, it’s almost like there’s like an unspoken arms race to make them shorter–no, not shorter, more focused, more concentrated. I’m not sure at what point we reached the nadir of games–particularly those of the triple-A persuasion–being a never-ending procession of endless “content”, but there’s something deeply refreshing about the idea that whether intentionally or not, game designers have discovered there’s a value in fermenting a game design, boiling it down into a playable umami. A rich flavour that lingers and sticks with you long after in comparison to the once-prevailing wisdom that players should be faced with an endless chocolate cake and forced to eat it like they’re Bruce Bogtrotter, quality be damned. Games that say, “we’re not just chocolate cake! We’re an endless buffet!” but the entire experience is, as I once said about Horizon: Zero Dawn, like chewing through a gym mat.
By comparison, Many Nights A Whisper gives you one thing to do. One perfect, polished thing. It gives you as much time as you want to do that thing, in a genius and thematic invitation to self-direction, though you’ll probably wrap things up within an hour, hour and a half. And I don’t think it could manage what it does any other way.
In Many Nights A Whisper, you are the “Dreamer”, chosen to practice with a slingshot for ten years in preparation for a single shot at a distant chalice that, as part of a sacred ceremony, will ensure everyone’s wishes will come true–at least, those whose wishes are heard and accepted by the Dreamer. The game begins with the ceremony fast approaching, and as people begin to deliver their wishes, finally the Dreamer’s slingshot range is able to be expanded with hair from the cut braids of those whose wishes are accepted. And so the player is given freedom to practice their expanding slingshot against increasingly distant targets each day, and then each night, they hear and choose which wishes to accept by cutting the braids of hidden petitioners.
And that’s it, until one day, you have to make the shot. And you really do only get one attempt.
In a strange way, the thing that Many Nights A Whisper reminded me most of was The Bear’s incredible season three opener, “Tomorrow.” While the show itself has, ironically, lost focus completely–and to be honest, the very next episode in season three does its best to blow up its thesis, anyway, Tomorrow movingly, non-linearly, shows chef Carmy’s sometimes beautiful, sometimes painful, sometimes awful history intertwined with his work, his process for forming a new menu for the titular restaurant. Layer by layer, the episode offers an affirmation:
You are not simply the sum of what has happened to you. You are what you choose to do with that.
It is an aspirational song of praise to putting everything of yourself into your process. It’s like when you watch one of those NHK documentaries about a factory that hand-produces lacquer bowls, or something. You think, you are reminded, that you are a corporeal being that exists in the world. You can imagine the simple yet deep pleasure of mastering something, putting yourself into it, knowing every movement, until it becomes second nature; the work sings a song you woven not just by your hand but by the life that got you to that point.
In a world that almost feels more virtual than real now–forever interrupted, beauty shortcut with slop, isolation and othering as policy–these things make you face up to how you’ve hardened. They make you long for a honest dialogue between yourself and the world: and make you content with the fact that being honest with yourself is maybe the only thing you can control.
You are not your context. You are what you choose to do there.
Many Nights A Whisper doesn’t give you a world to explore. It gives you the role of the Dreamer–designed clearly to visually reference the modern incarnation of The Legend of Zelda’s Link–in a small courtyard that only hints at the larger world. You’re wearing (and I would love to know the story behind this) an Ixnay On The Hombre t-shirt, your mentor has a big telly… but this otherwise could, if you squint, be Hyrule. Many Nights A Whisper gives you a context you already know, and an interaction you already know. Left trigger to aim, right trigger to shoot. It asks you to consider your process, and engage with just how hard you want to work by giving you a safe, understandable, recognizable space to work in, with no distractions.
And while it does that, each night it ask you to consider why you’re doing it. Is it just because you’ve been asked? Because you want to make people’s wishes come true? Whose? Who deserves it, and who doesn’t? What is the world you want to create by your hand?
Many Nights A Whisper describes itself as an interactive essay, which I think is a little precious. Because it is very much a video game, a visceral video game. At first, you make your little shots into nearby chalices, you accept easy, uncomplicated wishes and enjoy the reward of “levelling up” your slingshot. A few in-game days later you’re making micro-movements and cursing as you miss shots at chalices far in the distance, then trying to navigate the wishes of the selfish and confused. “I need more distance” you think, “but this person is unworthy.”
And then, suddenly, the ceremony is due. You have one last afternoon with which to perfect the shot. Can you? Walk away from the spot you’ve chosen, line it up. Hit. Walk away, spin around, line it up. Was that right? Hit. Alright, if I get it a third time, I’ll move on. Walk away, spin around, put the Steam Deck down, make a cup of tea, dunk a chocolate digestive, fuck half of it broke off, burn your finger trying to dig it out, back to the kitchen and grab a spoon, urgh it’s too soft now, back to the Steam Deck, you know the chalice was right at this point on the screen… wait, move it here. No, there. Miss.
Fuck.
As someone who is extremely free with walkthroughs, save states and the rest–games are to be enjoyed–one of the meaningful things about Many Nights A Whisper is how deeply it engenders an urge to do it right. To give yourself over to the process. To try and try again to make a lacquer bowl with all the knowledge of the history that made it what it was and made you what you were. I played for real. I tried many different ways, I practised. I spent far longer than I’d expect I would have trying to get myself to the point it was second nature. Until I realised I was overthinking it. If I took a breath, stopped, and attempted a shot based simply on what felt right–a shot based entirely on the accumulation of practice, I’d make it. But if I kept trying, I’d get tangled in it. Micro-movements, losing my place. I’d start to miss.
So I stopped practising. There’s only so much you can prepare. I didn’t even make sure my last shot was a hit. I simply trusted in my process.
At the ceremony, I took a breath. I closed my eyes, I thought about everything I had gone through. Was it really just an hour, or was it a lifetime? I pulled back the slingshot, and I fired.
Will I ever play it again? I am somewhat interested in what happens if you do certain things different ways, or if certain things play out differently on different playthroughs. But at the same time, my experience was so singular, and the tension so real, that if I ever play this again it’ll be a long time yet.
Final Thought: It’s a rare video game that I say “this could only exist as a video game” but Many Nights A Whisper is one. The preparation and tension of the shot is pitched perfectly–the game is just long enough that it feels like it matters if you fail, but not so long that it makes attempting it in the first place seem insurmountable. It is to experience, mechanically, the crunch-time moment of an underdog sports movie, layered with all your own effort to get you there, holding, quite literally, everyone’s hopes and dreams with you.
Many Nights A Whisper is, currently, my game of the year. And it ain’t even close.
