The new indie game has us traversing a manor to seek out ghosts and help them find their way using accurate tools of the hunting trade
Every late Summer & Fall I tend to get sucked into shows about ghost hunting. They’re a sort of guilty pleasure, especially since I’m extremely into process. Among the Whispers Provocation focuses on that ghost hunting process in its purest form, almost too pure.
The game is set in a sort of giant manor with very manor-like rooms and similar aesthetic, right down to the knight armor decor and ballrooms and tapestries and chalices and artefacts. It’s very cliche, very Netflix movie, very Video Game. We’re given a bunch of tools to use to find and “see” the ghosts and then we use deduction skills to understand them. The game’s purpose is to have us bring these spirits some peace, to send them into the afterlife. And there’s a lot of them, too, and a lot of other things to find in the manor to keep us occupied in between hunts and deductions.
There usage of the tools and the dedication to the craft is pretty impressive. Everything from the meters and sensors to specific cameras to laser pens is there, and it really feels like an actual ghost hunting session; but that also means that it’s not meant to be scary, rather enjoying putting itself and us through the steps of the tasks. Because of that depth needed it’s also very tutorial heavy and verbalizes what we have to do next, almost too much so. The game’s protagonist, us, will say things like “I need to find my backpack” and “I should open my map” and it throws us out of the experience, often slowing us down. We also need a lot of space to open our backpack, which is weird because we as an in-game character should already know where we keep everything, and just be able to grab things quickly without having to go through the whole unpacking process. Opening the pack means we lay everything out onto the floor, which both isn’t realistic in these situations and it isn’t fun to do.
I guess that’s the dichotomy of the game. It provides a pretty true experience that ghost hunting nerds like me can appreciate, but some things could have been simplified. It’s still a game after all, and needs to be somewhat enjoyable, incorporating modern quality of life gaming aspects into the overall procedural experience. That all leads to there feeling like not being enough tension or weight to what we’re trying to figure out anyways.
Among the Whispers: Provocation isn’t a bad game by any means, and it’s actually a good ghost hunting exploration that will surely lead to further love of the profession, but it comes off more “ghost of the week” than leading to a final destination.
Steam code provided by publisher. This video originally appeared in The SideQuest LIVE for December 30, 2025.
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