A wonderful, unique, narrative tale where you switch between a diary of your thoughts and an adventure platformer you are writing yourself, Lost Words is truly a wonderful experience.
Lost Words has been in development for quite some time now, showcasing demos at nearly every event in the UK and abroad. I’ve personally seen many iterations of this game — from being viewed on a laptop at an event’s afterparty to winning various awards and polishing the story. Lost Words is turning out better than I could have even imagined.
You play a young girl who dreams of being a writer. She has decided to start by writing about her life in a journal — and that is exactly where your adventure begins. The journal is a puzzle-based platformer — one that you can move and jump around with your tiny character. The girl narrates her story, reading out her thoughts and feelings as she writes.
Your goal is to get to the tiny tab on the other side of the book, jumping around and using the words you are given to make it there. Sometimes, specific words act as actions on drawings that she left in the book, while other times you need to move words around to make additional platforms.
Eventually, you start to dive into the story your character is creating — picking out different aspects of the game as well. The scene switches away from the lined pages of a journal and enters a polygon-based world where you play a badass warrior. You progress on your adventure as it is being written — but you can still use those different words to solve puzzles in the story. They appear at the bottom, writing up what is happening.
Your character also collects some of the words for future use, adding them to an inventory of words they use. Occasionally, you hit a snag in the story and return to the journal to learn more about your author. She is going through a lot right now and the journal is where she expresses her concerns.
From the absolutely lovely graphics and wonderful voice acting to the switch between these two worlds, Lost Words is a completely unique game that really hits the mark. I simply can’t wait to see where it goes next and anxiously await its release.
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