10 years ago, on July 9th, Whispering Willows released on Steam. The team didn’t realize it at the time, but the release of Whispering Willows paved the way to creating all that Akupara Games is today. Whispering Willows is a story rich mystery where Elena Elkhorn embarks on a harrowing journey to find her missing […]

Reprinted with the permission of our friends at DownloadAstro, Akupara’s narrative kingpin Kyle Holmquist gave a great interview on the development of Whispering Willows! As always, you can feel free to pick Kyle’s brain yourself by following him on Twitter or joining our Discord!     Did you have any prior development or coding experience? […]

By Kyle Holmquist   Whispering Willows took inspiration from a variety of sources, but probably one of its greatest sources of inspiration is the show American Horror Story, which was still in its first season when the game was being conceptualized. Many of the members on the team were watching the show, as it had […]

By Kyle Holmquist   Whispering Willows is very much a historical fiction, considering the story of Wortham Willows (the game’s antagonist) is actually set in the mid-late 1800s. We took a huge amount of inspiration from the story of John Bidwell, an affluent pioneer from that same era who was known for leading one of […]

By Kyle Holmquist   Elena Elkhorn, the young protagonist of Whispering Willows, is 13 years old and is one of the last remaining members of the Kwantako tribe, a fictitious Native American tribe we created for the game. She’s smart, playful, angsty, stubborn, and free-spirited. Elena’s a lot like other girls her age, but the […]

By Kyle Holmquist   For Whispering Willows, we decided to go with a female protagonist for a few different reasons. During the time we were conceptualizing the game, there was a lot of unrest in the games industry for more diverse character portrayals beyond the relatively standard white male protagonists, and that played largely into […]