UNHEARD Review for Steam

I had a lot of fun playing Unheard by independent development studio, NEXT Studios -it’s not heavy at all on your computer and the audio and stories were very immersive. I would definitely put this game into its own genre because of how it’s all put together. Unheard has an auditory puzzle aspect and the overall game design makes it an entertaining title.

Gameplay

You play as a detective and use headphones to go back in time and listen to past conversations in order to solve the case.

There are a total of 5 cases in the game you need to solve and all the moves you make are presented in the form of audio; you can even take notes on the timeline of the cases to track current events. It’s not a game where you move your character from crime scene to crime scene – in Unheard, you need only listen to what the characters are saying. You are allowed the choice of going back and forth between the audio and listening to it as many times as you want. There is no time limit and listening to all the details is crucial for you to solving the case. Characters and storylines intermix and that’s where the difficulty in naming your culprit increases. It’s up to you to figure out in what order these events took place, who was where, who is doing what, and who is still relevant just cause. The cases are engaging, the voice acting does the game so much justice to bring the characters to life and its plot twist after plot twist. I won’t go into too much detail but the first case about the brothers got me hooked because I was so confused at the beginning, by the time I figured it all out, I was kinda hoping to see the aftermath of the events. Like perhaps seeing the brother trying to make a run for it, but one only wishes.

Some of the cases start to get longer and audio times reach up to about 15 minutes in length. However, if you don’t want to listen to all the jargon, you can take the easy way out and just skip to the end and enter the names of whom you think the culprits are, but what’s the fun in that? Unheard is original, the design intriguing, and the writing captivating. I wish that the game could go more into a different direction, maybe perhaps adding a police department perspective more present in the story. Unheard has a lot of potential and the studio is planning on releasing additional free DLC in the near future. The only con to the game is that it’s a bit short, but it’s still enough to keep you engaged by the mysteriousness of it all at a good pace. I just think it could’ve been lengthened a little bit more.  Overall, I give Unheard a 10/10.

Check Out the Unheard Video:

Unheard is available for PC via Steam for $6.99.