This game took around one hour to complete the main story and then approximately 20 minutes to find all the "Secret Objects" to obtain the "Secret Good Ending". All in all I really enjoyed my time with it. Right now the game is on sale for $1 and it is a steal at that price. The original asking price of $10 is a bit high however for 1.5 hours of gameplay.

+ The game plays out like very light survival horror anime game, complete with references and atmospheres akin to silent hill & fatal frame. There are no weapons or fighting to do, basically you are walking around your apartment for an hour uncovering an interesting story while ghastly things begin to appear around you.
+ The game had some genuinely creepy sections.
+ The use of sound on headphones is excellent, playing with headphones in the dark is a must. The patter of ghost feet running around you, doors creaking, furniture moving around, was very atmospheric and well done.
+ The game is well made and has a polished feel throughout.
+ The story kept me invested, I wanted to know what was going on and what happened to the main character's friend

- The character model you control is too close to the screen, a quarter of the screen at all times is looking at the back of her head.
- The enemy ghost could be designed a bit scarier, was a bit cheesy at times.
- A run button would have been nice, but I understand why they didn't add one.

Grab it on sale!
Overall: 7.5 / 10

The idea of wandering your apartment to piece together a gruesome mystery may remind you to the undeservedly overlooked Silent Hill 4: The Room, especially with its third-person perspective, which is a rarity nowadays. Yet, Wire Lips fails to celebrate the influences I am projecting onto it; the libation it offers is not a chalice of homage, but a bitter venin of mediocrity.

Although I usually favor this perspective over first-person games, it creates problems here. The camera is uncomfortably close to the main character, which may aim to create a claustrophobic atmosphere but instead becomes irritating as her body obstructs half the screen. Thankfully, since this is essentially a walking simulator, your movements at least aren’t hindered that much. I picked Wire Lips because it seemed like a bridge between MiSide and Umfend, with its white-haired, anime-inspired main character, but here, AIHASTO had not yet fully committed to the moe aesthetic, as the contrast between her oversized eyes and the occasional appearance of disturbingly realistic ones staring back is more amusing than unsettling.

The gameplay mirrors Umfend in that you primarily walk through rooms, guided by lights, sounds, or other subtle cues. Yet here, it’s far more aggravating. The distances you need to cover are significantly longer, yet the character’s movement speed is excruciatingly slow. It’s as if her agonizingly sluggish pace is a plea for the monster to catch her and finally put an end to it all.

And then, there’s the monster; a painfully generic creature lurking in the darkness. Unlike Umfend’s ghost, which had depth, purpose, and a unique appearance, this one is like a premade model usable in any similar game. It is the materialization of one of the reasons I struggle to take the “scary ghost” genre seriously; the monster seems more afraid of us than we are of it, desperately rushing away at the slightest sound. We hear something, follow it, only to find the creature slamming a door and running out of sight before we arrive. It’s just silly. Why on earth would a monster behave like that? I can’t rationalize it, nor can I bring myself to feel any fear toward such a cowardly entity. They did manage to catch me with a jump scare, but considering the game is essentially a string of jump scares, having one that works is not much of an achievement. The gameplay loop is simple: walk a few steps, hear a loud noise, see a grotesque face flash by, and wake up unharmed moments later.

I don’t want to be overly negative, I really don’t, but there’s nothing I enjoyed about this game. Even the sound design I praised in Umfend feels entirely absent here, and the constant flickering lights gave me a headache. The “puzzles” are laughable. The story attempts to be compelling but brings nothing intricate, leaving the experience feeling shallow and underwhelming.

Full post: https://kenrinzero.wordpress.com/2025/01/12/the-prequels-of-miside/

I cannot recommend this title even when on sale. It is unfortunately just not a well designed experience, and relies far too heavily on tropes and jump scares to create its tone. Wire Lips attempts to be a surrealist horror piece but in actuality comprises almost entirely of walking between a handful of small rooms joined by hallways to complete tasks that take mere seconds to complete. The entire game you are told exactly what to do and are never given any opportunity to play the game for yourself. The developers have gone as far as placing invisible walls to prevent you from getting too close to the monster/environment objects that are centimetres away from you with nothing in the way. I was especially disappointed in one section where blood is flowing in a heavy stream from the ceiling, and you are not able to walk near it despite it being inside an empty hallway. Presumably this was done to avoid having to do extra animation and scripting work with you walking into a stream of blood, which provokes the question. Why?

Why is this a video game? You are not meant to interact with the environment or story, so why is it a game? This concept would have worked better as a short film or a book, but not as a game. The span of the entire game is just busy work to get you from plot point to plot point, points that when analysed critically also do not make very much sense.

The most unfortunate aspect of the entire piece is that there are some solid bones for a good experience here, but they are entirely underutilised if touched on at all. There are a few mirrors within the apartment that you are confronted with the moment you enter one of the few rooms. Never once did I see anything change or happen when looking into these mirrors, despite this being the most obvious way to deliver some non jump scare horror. The crux of the issue is that you are never being pursued in this title, rather you are following a list of directions by the very thing that is meant to scare you.

In summation, this title is overly repetitive and does not offer anything new or particularly original. There is very little in the way of substance and the entire experience is defined by the repetitive tropes and handholding delivery that comprises the entire runtime.

nice little horror game

love it