Lost Words: Beyond the Page

A gorgeous game with a delightful gameplay mechanic. I won't spoil it for you in this review, just hint that this mecahnic is playable even in the end credits. Which is cute.

Note that this is a narrative-centric focused experience. The gameplay elements are not challenging and meant to just move you forward: just some light platforming and trivial puzzles. Choices matter only lightly, affecting how the story is told, but not the outcome.

Annoyingly, cut scenes cannot be skipped, except that dialog can be fast forwarded sometimes. That feature seems to be randomly placed. This is important if you care to go back after you finish the game for missing collectibles. After repeating a few cutscenes I was discouraged from that task.

As for the story, the good thing is that its lovingly narrated. The protagonist's voice is a cheerful presence and there's so much attention paid to the craft of telling. Perhaps not quite enough to the showing. It's deliberately expository. And unfortunately, despite all the prettiness, the story itself is predictable and plodding, all the way to the game's final humdrum and shallow message about life, loss, and growing up. It seems some reviewers were quite touched by the experience. I mostly yawned.

Also worth mentioning that it's a bit buggy. In a few cases I did things that broke progress in the game. Restarting it fixed those issues. Luckily, checkpoints are quite plentiful... Except for a few cases where they aren't and a casual mistake may force you repeat a cutscene.

All in all, a disappointing title. And yet it's delightful enough that I enjoyed my few hours of play.