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Hi! This is Nils from Daedalic Entertainment, publisher of Children of Silentown, I’m here today to tell the tale of how this idea evolved into today’s game – as a full-fledged title by a small group of people in their off-hours from their full-time software development and YouTube content creation jobs. Originally developed as an animated short, Elf Games and Francesca from Luna2 Studio collaborated to bring the Children of Silentown into the interactive medium. The passion this team exudes is infectious, poured into the project slowly but steadily over the years. Take a look at the Making Of video below to hear directly from the team. Even Jack, the punk, cannot wait to share it with everyone! Meet him and the team in the Making Of video embedded at the top this post.
Piero, the programmer of the team, shares that “we at Elf Games used four years of our free time to make Children of Silentown. It is a game that some say is a hauntingly beautiful point-and-click adventure game, but see for yourselves. We are very proud of it. But we are not full-time developers: Elf Games instead develops video games after business hours, as their members are already busy with their software development company.”
Children of Silentown is certainly a point-and-click adventure, however the team wouldn’t say it’s a conventional one. Most traditional point-and-clicks focus on finding items and combining them at the right time. Elf Games took these elements of course, but also combined them with elements from other classic adventure games. For example, they took inspiration from OneShot and A Bird Story, specifically, the camera view that allows more exploration and the quest-like structure in some parts. Moreover, the game features song-based mechanics that link directly to the story. By using songs, the player unlocks situations and puzzles. Each of these songs is linked to a thematic minigame that creates variety in the gameplay.
The short version of how Children of Silentown came to be goes like this: In late 2018 Francesca, known as Fraffrog on YouTube, showed Fabiola and Piero an original short movie she created for her channel but never published. She asked them what they thought about it and delighted, they told her that it would be perfect for a video game.
Children of Silentown is a game about Lucy, a girl living in a town surrounded by a forest inhabited by monsters. From a concept as simple as that, the team tried to create a story that could live on many levels. They wanted to create a story where every bit could be an additional piece to the puzzle the player has, to help them unveil how the town and the forest came to be.
“Video games are a strong passion in which we feel we can bring together our skills and creativity. We have spent the past four years creating this project in our spare time, mostly on weekends, so development has been slow, but steady. It is not easy to dedicate yourself to such a long project, but we really believed we could make it real”, Francesca recollects.
This is how it started, and, like many projects, the original plan was to make a small, simple project. But things changed very quickly. After releasing a short demo, and being amazed by how well-received it was, we decided it was worthwhile to make it a bigger project, enough to truly bring to light the characters and the story of the world of Silentown.
It makes sense that the development of Children of Silentown would also be a bit unusual, as was its original conception. The team has worked diligently to not only meet our vision for the story, but grow the game into something bigger than we originally planned. Many people today have multiple jobs or hobbies they pour themselves into, this is the case with Children of Silentown, which we are so excited to share with the world. We hope you can all see what a labour of love it was and you all enjoy playing it as much as we enjoyed making it.
Children of Silentown is available now for Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S!
Children of Silentown
Daedalic Entertainment
Lucy is afraid of the forest, just like any other child: every night, the echoing roars rob her of her sleep. Not even her dreams are a safe place where she could play.
People disappearing is nothing uncommon in the village, but this time, Lucy is old enough to investigate on her own. Or so she thinks.
Children of Silentown is a point & click adventure game telling a mysterious and endearing story. Explore the town and its dangerous surroundings, meet its quirky inhabitants, solve puzzles and master minigames.
Accompany Lucy on her adventure to get to the bottom of what is haunting the strange Silentown… if you dare.”