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Growing up is a time of discovery \u2013 for better or worse. Adolescents are trying to figure out who they are, while confronting life\u2019s complexities and harsher realities. Lost Words: Beyond The Page dives into this confusing time by allowing you to interact with a young girl\u2019s journal as she pursues her dream of being a writer. You see two sides to her life: the story coming to life in her imagination and personalized entries showcasing her feelings as she faces her own hardships. The two begin to intertwine in interesting ways, making for an emotional tale about acceptance, perseverance, and coming of age that made me misty-eyed on more than one occasion. Lost Words: Beyond The Page is worth the\u00a0experience for this reason, but you have to contend with some shortcomings to get to the beauty.<\/p>\n
In Lost Words, the narrator, Izzy, is struggling to write her first story. We get insight into the frustrations and challenges through her journal, where she reveals what\u2019s going on in her personal life. The experience is heavily focused on atmosphere and narrative, right down to selecting certain aspects of Izzy\u2019s story, such as the character\u2019s name and attire and choosing the words to convey her emotions. You platform your way across words as she writes them in her journal, and you interact with the fantastical world she creates by selecting words from your journal and moving them to obstacles with your cursor, like using the word \u201crepair\u201d to fix a bridge or \u201crise\u201d to raise platforms.<\/p>\n
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Because words matter so much, a strong narrative is essential. Thanks to the effort\u00a0of writer Rhianna Pratchett, who worked on Heavenly Sword and the Tomb Raider reboot, the narrative is certainly the best part of the game. Izzy\u2019s journey is relatable to anyone who\u2019s had to find their way. Like every young person, she struggles with her self-esteem and having confidence in her own abilities, but what resonates the most is her feelings when she experiences an unpredictable tragedy that causes her to examine the darker parts of life. I won\u2019t spoil anything, but I will say that Lost Words can be a punch in the gut; I felt so much for Izzy as I watched her spiral into depression and struggle to accept the events unfolding around her.<\/p>\n
Overall, I enjoyed the main story and its message, but it does play out pretty predictably and occasionally overdoes it in the motivational speech department. However, outside of the main narrative\u2019s slow start, the way the game mechanics tell Izzy\u2019s story is quite beautiful. A few scenes will always stick with me, like when Izzy gets the ability to use the word \u201cignore\u201d to get past crowds, symbolizing her shutting out others. Sadly, these great moments don’t occur\u00a0regularly enough, forcing you to put up with some boring gameplay. It doesn\u2019t help that the environments in the fantastical world are barren, linear almost to a fault, and not very interesting to explore. Even navigating these spaces with their various challenges and obstacles gets dull fast, because the mechanics rarely change or evolve enough to be satisfying or offer a challenge. For instance, I loved when the word \u201crise\u201d transformed into a new gameplay mechanic when I was able to go underwater, but this is the only time I felt the game did anything interesting with the words at your disposal.<\/p>\n