Who's Lila?

Who's Lila is an adventure game played in two sections across a split-screen user interface. On the left-hand side of the screen, the player controls movement and interaction with the game world. On the right-hand side, the player manipulates a close-up representation of their face. During opportune moments in dialog with characters, the player influences the response given, or reactions to the player, by manually manipulating parts of their face using the cursor.^[2] The game uses a "neural network-powered emotion detection" to determine one of seven emotions represented: happy, scared, surprised, sad, angry, disgusted, or neutral.^[3] Player choices are complicated by the use of a time limit and moving facial features to add challenge to expressing the desired emotion, although an 'easy mode' provides players with the option to remove these from the game.

Who's Lila? also integrates elements similar to an alternate reality game as players complete puzzles using elements extraneous to the game, including the use of information from social media pages depicting fictional characters, and a separate program to run parallel to the game to unlock certain events.^[2] The game also features nonlinear gameplay requiring players to restart the game multiple times, with previous endings being depicted by tarot cards that can be used with a character in the game to offer additional insight on the mysteries of the game. The game features 15 endings, although additional hidden endings are available.^[3]

The game opens with main character William Clarke, an 18-year old living by himself in an apartment complex, explaining to the player he finds it "difficult to express emotions", and that he "has to make a conscious decision each time [he] moves a [facial] muscle." The game then opens up with multiple story branches and endings, most of which have a surreal, Lynchian tone, and many portraying flashbacks told out of order, making it difficult to fully comprehend the full story.

The "main route" of the game involves William going to school, where the player is informed that classmate Tanya Kennedy has been missing for days, and William was the last person to have been seen with her at a party. Naturally, William is therefore the primary suspect. While the player is initially led to assume William, a socially awkward teenager without many friends, is simply being accused wrongly, it is gradually made obvious that William isn't as innocent as first thought. He ends up killing Tanya's friend Martha to silence her accusations, and is arrested and interrogated at the end of the game by the police after they found Tanya's remains in trashbags outside his apartment.

Clues in the game reveal to the player they have not been playing as William, but rather as a malevolent entity named Lila, who possessed and took control of William's body prior to the events of the game, and is presumably the true culprit behind Tanya's disappearance. After a certain ending is achieved, "William"/Lila is contacted by Detective Yu, a man who is curious about Lila's nature, identity, and prior role in William's life. After initially encountering Yu, each ending the player achieves unlocks a bonus cutscene where Yu and Lila discuss various topics related to the central mysteries of the game, like Tanya's disappearance, William's psyche and backstory, and what, or who, Lila actually is.

Garage Heathen released a demo version of Who's Lila on 11 August 2021, and on 2 February 2022 announced a release date of the game for 23 February of that month.^[4] A soundtrack featuring music from the game was released on 25 March.^[5]