Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn review

• Reviews by Jenna Ruby Marvet
• Published:

It’s haunted by some first-game issues, but is otherwise a promising start of a new Nancy Drew-styled detective series

Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn is a love letter to the early Nancy Drew PC games released by HeR Interactive. Having been drawn back into gaming five years ago by Nancy Drew streamers, I have a lot of love for those games, and this first Alex Hill installment by developer hannahontrek succeeds in capturing the familiar signposts of the beloved first-person mystery genre. But while it successfully delivers fan service with heart, this debut series installment struggles to carve out a clear identity that would let it stand on its own.

As Nancy Drew game fans know, we don’t love the series because it’s flawless – the charm of the original PC games lies in their camp, clunkiness, and silliness. Alex Hill doesn’t try to smooth those edges. Instead it embraces its roots, leaning into that same formula to create a mystery that feels like it re-emerged from an early-2000s time capsule, highlighted by its purposefully lo-fi graphics, slideshow-style mechanics, and nostalgic dialogue-driven investigation.

Whispers at White Oak Inn puts players in the shoes of Alex Hill, a headstrong but helpful young detective. She’s well-intentioned and outgoing, but we learn early on she supposedly has a bit of an edge. Returning to work at a private detective agency after a suspension for bending the rules, Alex is sent to upstate New York by her boss Concilio to investigate threatening letters being left for a White Oak Inn employee in a case with suspicious supernatural layers. Ghostly sightings of Audrey, daughter of the inn’s former owner Lisa, who died in a boating accident two years earlier, have unsettled guests, supposedly caused mysterious accidents, and left emotional scars on the people who were closest to her. While being driven to the inn, Alex herself sees the image of a ghostly young woman walking towards her.

Once there, as Alex, we investigate Audrey’s ex-boyfriend Ronnie, her best friend Lauren, White Oak’s new owner Dennis, haunted places blogger Shirley, and local curiosity shop owner Henry to uncover what’s really going on. The mystery hinges on the threatening letters Ronnie is receiving, which seem to imply he may have had a bigger part in Audrey’s death than he remembers. This sends Alex down the path of figuring out who might really be behind the hauntings, whether they are leaving the letters and causing trouble at the inn, and if Audrey’s death was indeed the accident people say it was.

White Oak was recently purchased by Dennis from Lisa, but Dennis has his own familial connection to the inn, via his great-grandmother Eliza who lived there and supposedly built a system of secret tunnels under the house. Is it possible Dennis is hoping for financial gain from the inn being considered a ghostly tourist destination? He sure seems to hope that Shirley’s blog readers are as loyal as she says. Wouldn’t discovering a new haunted place be a great boon for Shirley’s fame and help her upcoming book fly off the shelves?

Then there are the suspects who were close to Audrey when she was alive. Ronnie dated her, but was not a very good partner according to Ronnie himself and Audrey’s best friend Lauren. He was very fond of Audrey, but struggled with dangerous behaviors that affected their relationship. He was in such a substance-induced haze that he can’t remember anything that happened on the night of Audrey’s death, supposedly. Could he have done something terrible under the influence and be lying about not remembering? Lauren is distraught from Audrey’s death, struggling with her own grief, and has undeniable bad blood towards Ronnie. Could she be stuck in the past? Finally, there’s Henry, who seemed to be awfully close with Audrey’s family, and loves to lurk around the inn so much that Dennis and Ronnie have sent the police after him. If he’s always nearby, could he be staging the hauntings?

Despite the paranormal backdrop, the mystery feels rather intimate. It’s not gimmicky and begins to explore the threads between people processing grief and guilt. The ghostly encounters are subdued – appropriately eerie, but not graphically over-the-top or scary. There’s a cloud of sadness around the suspects that feels real in the aftermath of such a tragedy. The voice acting is simple and avoids overwrought moments; the performances are measured, sometimes to the detriment of not expressing strong emotions. Alex’s voice, while distinctly chipper, is down-to-earth and approachable.

Gameplay is largely what you’d expect from a Nancy Drew-styled first-person point-and-click mystery: a mix of clue hunting, puzzle solving, and interviewing the cast of suspects to ultimately reveal the true culprit behind the wrongdoings at the center of it all. Alex is armed with her handy cell phone, where she can do light research and call her work friend Cassandra and her boss Concilio to discuss the case, and a helpful task list that updates as you progress without spoiling too much. A number of puzzles are classic and solid, integrating details in the environment and sometimes requiring a bit of additional research, such as a locked box that involves connecting its combination to a clue found elsewhere. I also enjoyed the tangible experience of figuring out how to repair a flat bicycle tire, reassembling the old bike so that we could ride between key locations chosen from a map. Once the bike is fixed, Alex can use fast travel between the inn, outdoor shop, boathouse, and curiosity shop.

Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn

Genre:	Mystery
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D, Slideshow
Theme:	Crime solving, Paranormal
Perspective:	First-Person
Gameplay:	Investigative, Puzzle
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Medium (5-10 hours)
Difficulty:	Low
Graphic Style:	Simulated realism

Alex has an inventory of items she collects and can use to solve problems. I wouldn’t necessarily classify these as puzzles, since the solutions are quite straightforward. Rather, the tasks tended to devolve into scavenger hunting. To fix a hole in the boat, you have to find boat putty and a putty knife. To fill the bike tire, you have to find the bike pump. Some codes are hidden in clever places that take a keen eye to locate before entering in the correct device or item. While there are a few puzzles that offer a different challenge, like hacking a cell phone by matching codes in a limited time, there isn’t a whole lot of puzzle variety or depth. There are a few minigames sprinkled in as well, such as a word scramble in Alex’s room and an arcade game at the curiosity shop. They’re enjoyable enough, but most tasks felt like echoes of inspiration to me rather than fresh takes emerging naturally from the story.

There are moments when Alex Hill starts to push the envelope, however. Themes like infidelity, substance abuse, and regret make their way into the narrative, and the game is most unique when it uses the familiar, comfortable mystery framework to delve deeper into emotional territory. A few plot beats and major twists even surprised me in a genuinely satisfying way.

Visually, Whispers at White Oak Inn aims for an early-to-mid-2000s style and largely succeeds, especially when it comes to the environments. The inn is cozy, the boathouse is eerie, and there’s a nostalgic lo-fi, static polish to it all, explored by clicking directionally and turning in 90-ish-degree increments. My favorite scenes happen at night, when the royal blue skies are littered with bright white dollops of stars. The developer even included a slideshow of backgrounds for when you are riding your bike to key locations, both in day and night lighting, which is a nice touch. The music is generally pleasant, though generic, with soft piano tunes backed by some natural sound effects.

The character models generally look well-designed from afar, with mostly natural looking full-body animation. However, the up-close models are a bit unnerving, with puppet-like movements and waxy hair textures. But other than these somewhat uncanny models, the overall look and feel of Alex Hill is easily the game’s greatest strength.

Beneath the aesthetic and a well-intentioned mystery, unfortunately, there is an overall lack of specificity throughout the story that makes it hard to fully enjoy beyond nostalgic feelings for the genre. For example, detached menial tasks stand in for story-led challenges, with Alex helping Lauren with pricing sale items and making schedules at the outdoor shop. Or, when Alex is being haunted, the spectral figure says things like “help me,” in stereotypical fashion, rather than something that connects to the character of Audrey or the motivation of the culprit.

Dialogues lack much individualized characterization as well, leaving mostly one-or-two-note characters without many discernible qualities. It became difficult to not compare these characters to their inspirations in the Nancy Drew games, whose suspects leaned into their own individual quirks wholeheartedly and without apology.

The game’s biggest design weakness is its extreme linearity. It’s too easy to get stuck in a loop of bopping between characters just to trigger the next dialogue branch. There’s rarely something else to do while you wait for the story to catch up with you. Without more flexibility or layered objectives, the gameplay really starts to drag at times throughout its seven or so hours of play time, and the reliance on dialogue makes it feel less like we are following a trail of breadcrumbs to find the culprit than I’d like in a first-person mystery game.

Final Verdict

With a sequel already announced, I’m hopeful the series can grow into a stronger sense of self and continue to carve out a distinct voice. There are some wonderful glimmers in this introductory debut, especially in aesthetic vision, and with room left for improvement, I think it can and will go up from here. For now, Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn is a familiar, well-meaning sort of mystery that will charm longtime fans of the Nancy Drew games in particular. The game does well in recreating a similar tone and rhythm with a bit more edge, but here’s hoping the series starts pushing further above homage to pave its own way in the genre.

Jenna played Alex Hill: Whispers at White Oak Inn on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.