"It's difficult for me to express emotions. I envy other people. They make faces naturally, but I have to make a conscious decision each time I move a muscle."
Who's Lila is an indie Mystery Adventure Game with Psychological Horror elements from February 2022, created by the Russian solo developer Garage Heathen, who also created Your amazing T-Gotchi!.
It is a David Lynch-esque reverse-detective point-and-click game where you control the actions of a student named William Clarke. A unique feature of this game is that in addition to the traditional point-and-click elements, the player is offered no control over the dialogue, instead they influence the conversations of the game by shifting Will's facial muscles to construct his expressions. As Will explains to the player in the introduction, showing emotions is just not something that comes natural to him, and he has never really gotten the hang of facial expression in particular, so he hopes that with their help, he will be able to make a good impression on other people, or, failing that, at least not come off as too strange around them.
But things get complicated when a local girl, Tanya Kennedy, has gone missing, and all evidence points to Will. Will the player keep their cool, or allow Will's emotions to run wild? Will you dig into all the endings to uncover as much of the puzzle as you can? And will you find the answer to the game's most burning question:
Who's Lila contains examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Will's mother was a smothering woman who felt the need to be in control of Will's life and know every intricate detail of his life. She was also emotionally abusive, once berating him and a girl he brought over since he showed interest in girls before the age of 16.
- Alternate Reality Game: The game utilizes several aspects of ARGs to solve some of the game's mysteries:
- Spectrogram images can be found for players willing to seek them out.
- Morse code in hidden areas can reveal an answer to one of the game's mysteries.
- Finding some of the game's secrets requires corrupting a save file.
- The Lovers and the Sun endings require the player to find a character's Twitter.
- The player has to download files and read articles outside the game itself to have a better understanding of the game's story.
- There is a piece of free DLC called the DAEMON which, when downloaded, runs in another window and gives the player clues on how to progress. Doing so is necessary to complete the game.
- Ambiguous Situation: Did Lila murder Tanya while possessing Will's body? Or did Will kill Tanya believing that he was getting rid of Lila?
- Anachronic Order: There is a timeline of events in the game and the date it happens to be depends on the player's actions.
- And I Must Scream: The fate for those trapped in the Veil, which Detective Yu describes as a place without time.
- Ancient Conspiracy: There are numerous allusions to the government controlling what people think. In the Hierophant ending, Will is approached by FBI agents.
- Angry Eyebrows: The easiest way to have Will express anger is by furrowing his eyebrows.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Implied to have happened with Will's mother, Father Lawrence, and eventually Will.
- Audience Surrogate:
- Detective Yu. Lila makes multiple puns about it and will even insult the player for it.
- Wheeliam reveals that the incredibly enigmatic Stranger is also the player.
- Big Bad: The titular Lila is the killer of Tanya Kennedy and the one possessing William Clarke.
- Big "NO!": Detective Yu shouts this when he finally gets the answer he seeks, combined with a Precision F-Strike.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall:
- Lila does this, with some her dialogue referencing the player directly.
- Even the player's own attempts to answer the core question of "who's Lila?" ultimately lead to this.
- Tanya has an argument with Garage Heathen, the game's developer, on Twitter. She also retweets a portrait of Lila prior to the game's release.
- Chekhov's Gun: You have to pick up the garbage bag at the start of the game and put it in the trash before you allowed to travel anywhere else. This is all but stated to contain Tanya's dismembered torso, which the police later find.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe: How the Lawrence Fraternity believes they are summoning Lila.
- Cult: Specifically, a Mystery Cult: Father Lawrence and his Fraternity.
- Disappeared Dad: Will's father left when he was young.
- Driving Question:
- It's right in the title- who is the mysterious woman called Lila? Even more than the mystery of who killed Tanya Kennedy, which can potentially be revealed early on, this question is what drives the plot.
- Existential Horror: The game explores the heavy nature of consciousness and identity and what would count as such. Some of the dialogue can be rather... unsettling.
- Foreshadowing:
- In William's apartment hangs a painting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Lady Lilith, aka Lila.
- When Will and Tanya dance, an image of an owl is shown, which is associated with Lilith.
- Most characters, when speaking, have their name displayed in their text box. Strangely, William does not... because it's not really Will.
- In Detective Yu's office, one possible conversation has Lila state that if Yu were to shoot William, she would be completely unharmed. This exact scenario ends up playing out in a different conversation.
- Fiery Cover Up: Detective Yu and his men are responsible for the fire that seemingly killed Father Lawrence and his cult. It's because the FBI have been using "Ultra-Influencing Works of Any Media" for last decade or so and Father Lawrence caught on.
- First-Episode Spoiler: In a sense. There are multiple routes you can take, but the one you are encouraged to go through first is the school route, where it is revealed that Lila is possessing William Clarke, which is referenced in other routes. Despite this being a big twist, you can find it out as early as the first play through (in a game that takes at least 15 playthroughs to get all the endings) and much of the underlying mystery and lore revolves around it.
- Frame-Up:
- Everyone thinks Will's responsible for Tanya's death. In reality, her death is orchestrated by Lila and the Stranger in the Lovers ending. Even Tanya knows he didn't do it.
- This can also happen to Mike in one ending, where the real killer, the titular Lila, is able to get the police to go after him instead.
- Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The mystery of who Lila is and what exactly happened to Tanya Kennedy, as well as the general plot and timeline surrounding everything. The surreal, Lynchian presentation, Anachronic Order, and branching paths make figuring out what is going on very confusing at first, but the more you progress, the more things begin to come together.
- Identical Stranger:
- Tanya looks exactly like Lila, much to Lila's annoyance.
- There is also the "Stranger", who strongly resembles Will and is connected with Lila, shown to have really murdered Tanya.
- Incriminating Indifference: One of Will's problems is that he often outwardly shows little-to-no emotion in tense or emotional situations, making him come off as strange to other people. One of the player's tasks is trying to prevent him from doing this.
- Interface Spoiler: Signs that we haven't been playing as Will are when he's referred in the third person and when the dialogue box identifies him as the speaker.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Lila teases Detective Yu as to what her real nature is: a Tulpa, or Will's coping mechanism in response to trauma, among other things. Evidence points to the former.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Invoked, it's how Lila exists.
- Also discussed with Chet Murrie and his Dada Dog.
- Mind Screw: Lila does this on purpose to both Detective Yu and the player. It's how she exists in-game, and now in the player's mind.
- Missing Mom:
- Will's mother died three years prior to the events of the game. In reality, she's been trapped in the other world by Lila, much like Father Lawrence.
- Lila is implied to have this sort of relationship with her mother.
- Multiple Endings: There are fifteen endings, plus a few secret ones. In some sense all endings exist within the same continuity, as you are expected to use information from some ending paths to reach others, and there are even items that persist between playthroughs.
- Ending 0- The Fool: After provoking Mark into pushing him off of the school roof by repeating Tanya's words to him, Will awakens, unharmed, in a completely empty hospital. As you go up and up each level of the place, Will watches as he and Lila have a series of conversations about perception and the self, with each conversation making her less and less human until she turns into something looking like an ophanim and the staircase leading you up the hospital breaks down. Will climbs a nearby ladder, goes through a veil of fabric, and exits into a forest with a film projector showcasing an image of Lila.. You remove the reel from the projector, before discovering a boat that takes you down a river that begins to disappear until the game resets. This ending is almost identical to the game's "The Hanged Man" and "The High Priestess" endings, with the lack of the wheel from the "Wheel of Fortune" ending being the only real difference and interference with the projector.
- Ending II- The High Priestess: After provoking Mark into pushing him off of the school roof by repeating Tanya's words to him, Will awakens, unharmed, in a completely empty hospital. As you go up and up each level of the place, Will watches as he and Lila have a series of conversations about perception and the self, with each conversation making her less and less human until she turns into something looking like an ophanim and the staircase leading you up the hospital breaks down. Will climbs a nearby ladder, goes through a veil of fabric, and exits into a forest with a film projector showcasing an image of Lila.. You ignore it, before discovering a boat that takes you down a river that begins to disappear until the game resets. This ending is almost identical to the game's "The Hanged Man" and "The Fool" endings, with the lack of interference with the film projector being the only real difference.
- Ending III- The Empress (Reversed): Seeking out the second caller from earlier, Will discovers Strupnev, a remnant of Father Lawrence's cult. When Strupnev, sensing that Will is still in contact with Lila, attacks him, Will traverses a series of boiler rooms and eventually reaches a room that Lawrence was said to have left for Will. Will unleashes a being referred to only as "The Empress," who seemingly devours Strupnev and chides Lila for releasing her, before leaving the player with a set of numbers: 43033.
- Ending IV- The Emperor (Reversed): Taking the bus to Father Lawrence's apartment, Will finds a book of instructions left for him; following them, he stares into the center of a mandala-like image, which transports the player to a dream-like dimension. After interacting with a wax statue that Lila describes as a mirror to Will, a member of Lila's kin advises you to download the DAEMON DLC, and to interact with the phone in the front room with it as soon as you get the chance.
- Ending V- The Hierophant
- Ending VI- The Lovers
- Ending VIII- Strength: After returning to his apartment post-murdering Tanya's friend Martha, Will winds up being interrogated by the police. If you appear distressed enough throughout the interrogation, Will cracks under the second officer's questioning, confessing to murdering Tanya.
- Ending X- Wheel of Fortune: Achieved by successfully traversing the looping boiler room puzzle. You eventually reach a large machine, which addresses both Will and Lila, before gifting you a large metal wheel, at which point the game resets.
- Ending XII- The Hanged Man: After provoking Mark into pushing him off of the school roof by repeating Tanya's words to him, Will awakens, unharmed, in a completely empty hospital. As you go up and up each level of the place, Will watches as he and Lila have a series of conversations about perception and the self, with each conversation making her less and less human until she turns into something looking like an ophanim and the staircase leading you up the hospital breaks down. Will climbs a nearby ladder, goes through a veil of fabric, and exits into a forest with a film projector showcasing an image of Lila.. You replace the wheel you received from the "Wheel of Fortune" ending with the one of Will, then discover a boat that takes you down a river that begins to disappear until the game resets. This ending is almost identical to the game's "The Fool" and "The High Priestess" endings, with the new reel and interference with the film projector being the only real differences.
- Mushroom Samba: The Teth mushrooms the player finds early on are implied to be necessary in the ritual of summoning Lila.
- Must Have Nicotine: Tanya, during the party scene.
- My Beloved Smother: Will's mother was highly controlling of him.
- New Transfer Student: William.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Detective Yu and his men burn down Father Lawrence's base of operations, seemingly killing all of the cultists in the process. However, what he didn't count on was Lila warning Will not to be there ahead of time, thus giving her a remaining host to inhabit.
- No Social Skills: Played with. While Will knows what socially appropriate behavior is supposed to be, he has little-to-no intrinsic ability to make appropriate facial expressions for most situations. That's the area where the player is supposed to help him.
- Oh, Crap!: During the interrogation, it's possible for Detective Fisher to inform Will that a female torso was found outside his apartment. Will's reaction is a Big "WHAT?!" and an immediate wide-eyed look of terror (by comparison, other times Will's face moves on its own during gameplay, it assumes an expression over several seconds — here, it's almost instant).
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. The game has Ms. Hutchins, who is Will's elderly female building manager, and Officer Hutchins, a male police officer, with no apparent familial relationship between the two. They do know each other, however.
- Parental Abandonment: William's father.
- Purpose-Driven Immortality: Lila's only purpose is to survive, occupying hosts to do so.
- Retraux: The game uses 1-Bit graphics for character portraits and dithered, stylized black and white PS1 graphics for the rest.
- Riddle for the Ages: The question of "Who's Lila" itself. The game presents many, many conflicting and vague solutions, and lampshades that fact in the dialogues with Detective Yu. It's outright explained in one of the endings that the entire purpose of the game's world is to make the player feel like they are figuring things out, but remain unclear what the truth is.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Chet Murrie and Dada Dog are parallels to the real-world Matt Furie, his character Pepe the Frog, and how its usage later became associated with white supremacists.
- Ritual Magic:
- Used to achieve the Emperor (reversed) ending.
- Also implied to be the purpose of the animals on Father Lawrence's farm.
- Shout-Out: Several, mostly to the works of David Lynch.
- The dumpster right outside William's apartment is directly based on the ones seen in Mulholland Drive.
- William/Lila hiding in Martha Jennings' closet is inspired by a similar scene in Blue Velvet, of which the player finds the movie poster there. Lila outright calls it the only good thing in the room.
- The Stranger is inspired by the Mystery Man from Lost Highway.
- An alternate color palette that is unlocked from the start is named "Blue Rose", an important term in the Twin Peaks series.
- There are a couple of others in the palettes:
- A trash can outside the entrance of the school is described as being empty; doubling back unlocks the "Manful Soul" palette, a reference to Manly Badass Hero, who played the game's demo (and the full version as well). Manly has a Running Gag in his playthroughs noting that trash cans are "empty, like [his] soul".
- The player can find the skull of Nowak from Brutal Orchestra, which grants them a palette named after him.
- Soul Jar:
- The reels are implied to hold someone's consciousness and/or identity as they perceive them.
- Will's is discovered to be trapped in a machine in the Wheel of Fortune ending.
- It's implied to have happened to Will's mother in the Empress ending.
- Stealth Sequel: A secret document unlocked in one of the endings reveals that Your amazing T-Gotchi! was created by Lila as part of the Lawrence Fraternity's experiments.
- Surrealism: Let's see, you've got tulpas, states of consciousness, multiple areas of the game that don't take place in the real world, and flashbacks. It's all part and parcel of the David Lynch theme Garage Heathen was going for.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: In the beginning, you find a handsaw next to a trash bag in Will's apartment kitchen. Examining it says it's used for farming... However, there could be some truth here, given how Lawrence's cult indulged in animal sacrifice and Lila can be fed by human sacrifice as well.
- Tarot Motifs: Each ending is represented by one of the Major Arcana.
- Teens Are Monsters: Multiple examples:
- William is often bullied by other students.
- Danny, Martha's crush, takes advantage of her feelings for him.
- Tanya although immediately apologizing after, lashes out at Will in their first meeting.
- William, under Lila's control, is incredibly spiteful toward the students around him.
- Trauma Conga Line: Will. It's why Lila selects him as her host.
- Wham Line: In the school route, which you are encouraged to explore first, when confronting Martha in her apartment, Will says something near the end that delivers The Reveal.Will: The name is Lila.
- Woman Scorned:
- How Lila acts.
- Strupnev is also immensely jealous of Will and attempts to lure him to his death.
- You Cannot Kill An Idea: This is how Lila exists, has existed, and will continue to exist.
