Psychological horror PS1 horror Horror Horror puzzle

Who's Lila?

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Make the right face, or let them see what you are hiding.

Platforms: PC
Stores: Steam
Price: Paid
Rated: Very Positive on Steam (94% of 3,846 reviews); Adventure Gamers 3.5/5
Length: about 2 to 2.5 hours for one route; 6 to 10 for every ending
Players: 1
Made by: Garage Heathen
Released: 2022

What frightens A boy who was the last to see a missing girl must answer questions by moulding his own face into expressions, in a dithered, Lynchian town of steam-filled factories and strange visions, while something about him is badly wrong.
Content: violence, death, physical and mental abuse (including parental), disturbing imagery.

Who's Lila? is a point-and-click psychological horror mystery. Instead of choosing dialogue, you drag the parts of William's face into expressions, and a neural network reads them. A girl named Tanya has gone missing, William was the last to see her, and his friends want answers.

About Who's Lila?

Who's Lila? is made by Garage Heathen, an independent developer, and came out on Steam in February 2022. It was praised for one idea above all: you speak through a face.

Life has never been easy for William, a schoolboy who has trouble showing and feeling emotions. Today a classmate, Tanya Kennedy, has gone missing, and he was the last person to see her. In conversations you do not pick lines of text. You pull and push William's eyebrows, eyes and mouth into an expression, and a neural network trained for the game reads the emotion and the story moves on from what it sees. Will you hide what you know behind a calm mask, or let something show?

The world is drawn in stark one-bit dithered art: dreamlike landscapes, surreal buildings and steam-filled factories, with a debt to David Lynch. The story is non-linear. It has many endings, each named for a tarot card, and you are meant to restart, carry what you learned and dig deeper, with puzzles that reach outside the game into fictional characters' pages online.

The horror is psychological: menace, unease and moments that are hard to look at, more than monsters. Reviewers praised its originality and atmosphere, and some found the occasional action sections at odds with the rest. It suits players who like strange, puzzle-box mysteries in the spirit of Twin Peaks.

How to play Who's Lila?

Talk to characters by dragging parts of William's face into an expression, then submit it.
Watch how people react; the expression the game reads decides where the conversation goes.
Explore each scene in point-and-click style, picking up items and solving puzzles.
Reach an ending, then start again with what you know to unlock new paths and endings.
Look outside the game too: some puzzles point to fictional characters' pages online.

Screenshots

Who's Lila? screenshot: William stands before a mirror at left while at right his pixel face is pulled into a disgusted grimace, with a Submit button

Who's Lila? screenshot: William and a girl stand in tall grass by a pylon at night, his face shown sad beside them as he says I'm sorry

Who's Lila? screenshot: a figure climbs a dark red stairwell while William's face watches from the right panel

Who's Lila? screenshot: two small figures stand beside a market stall in a dithered low-poly street, William's face at right

Tips

Exaggerate expressions; subtle faces can be read as something else.
Keep notes on what each ending reveals.
Do not expect to understand it all on the first run; the game is built for repeats.
Try different faces with the same character to see what changes.