izigame.me

I think this game would have done a lot better in reviews with more playtesting before release. I waited until I saw the developers made multiple updates and patches before playing and I’m glad I did. I didn’t run into any tech issues.
I really enjoyed the game, but ohhhh is it hard! You play as a young detective trying to discover the secrets of those around him. Lots of interesting characters and stories of life in France during and after WWII and the French Resistance. You collect conversations and documents and then you need to make correlations and deductions to be able to open the chapter’s final confrontation and reveal. Most of the time I could tell what was going on, but what was difficult for me was picking the exact lines to correlate or my deductions would get a ‘that’s true, but …’ response, telling me I needed to make a bigger jump in my conclusions.
There is an automatic save upon exit and the game is completely mouse driven. This is a game for those who like serious deduction games with very little hand holding. There is a senior detective that can help you, but it will cost you points. It had a complicated story of war, choices, family, and repercussions. I liked this game it very much. I would recommend it to those who like reading and making deductions and getting caught up in a historic period in time.

I played this game primarily in French, so I cannot comment extensively on localization issues. Occasionally, I referred to the English translation to make sure I had understood the text correctly, and I found it reasonable.
Overall, I enjoyed Chronique des Silencieux, and I liked the detective work and the puzzles. It is not a particularly easy game, but I was able to complete most of my leads without any hints. The exploration is also fairly open-ended. The game reminds me of Lamplight City, except it is not possible to actually come to a completely incorrect conclusion.
The game is stymied by many bugs, the most egregious of which is faulty game logic and assumptions about player progression. (In the Prologue, my leads page contained information that I had not actually found yet. Later, in Chapter 2, Eugène reveals some details in his meet-up with Yves that I suspect I was not supposed to know yet, although I did already have some inklings of what he discussed.) However, the developer has been extremely responsive to bug reports, which I appreciate.

The most confounding crime here is why the game is so unknown.
But seriously, the game has a lot going for it. I love the animated look, the characters are surprisingly expressive during conversations. Menus are easy to read and mostly smooth to navigate, which is important when you'll spend so much time there poring over evidence.
The story is good so far. It's rare to get a straight up detective story like this that also has proper detecting gameplay; usually its one or the other. History and geography play a factor too, it is a genuine period piece that uses the setting and I'm sure the developers' own knowledge and experience to give an earnestness to it all.
Others have noted the issues. The English translation can sometimes be awkward, though not enough to impact the story or your deductions (that I've seen). Most of the difficulty so far has not been from failing to understand the mystery, but not knowing how to register that knowledge with the game to fully explore all the leads. Finding just the right lines to compare can be time consuming, though it does at least feel like detective work and putting things together is rewarding. It can sometimes just feel arbitrary when one connection is fruitless and another yields progress.
Still, the investigation mechanics themselves are good. I like how open the connections and hypothesis systems are, it lets deductions feel more like your own and less guided. The confrontations where you use your evidence to corner a suspect are a fun gamification of the classic detective speech.
Overall I think this is worth a try for anyone interested in detective games, so long as you accept some jank and frustration are a part of the process. There is a hint system now, and you're allowed to make mistakes, so don't let the reviews about difficulty put you off.
Will update if my opinion significantly changes as I get further.