the power of the word

Análisis from Lost Words Beyond the Page for Xbox Series X

Another week, I have an analysis. And this time it’s a different game than what I usually write; Well this time it’s time to analyze Lost Words Beyond the Page, a curious but playable narrative game full of emotions and good ideas. You know what they say, sometimes less is more and with very little material, although well combined, Sketchbook games created a work that works on feelings in two stories in parallel.

Sometimes life is not easy, and even less so among young people. Well, the emotions are a chaos between the hormonal changes typical of adolescence and the lack of experience in the world. Lost Words Beyond the Page puts us in the hands of a young woman, or gives us control with her hands, depending on how we want to see it. Our protagonist, Izzy, is a girl who aspires to be a writer someday. To make this dream come true, he keeps a diary in which he tells about his daily life, although at the same time he decides to start writing a story. The gameplay is directly linked to all of this, which brings us to experimenting with “first person” lyrics.

The first bars put us a sort of puzzle platform on the pages of Izzy’s journal.

While she tells us about her daily life, the lyrics construct the scene that we have to go through. However, not only do we jump from word to word, we also have to rearrange Izzy’s ideas to build the sentences or move the words around in the journal so that we can skip them or even fill in gaps like an English test. In addition, new playable ideas are added to every page.

If we can move a word “paint”, for example, it will allow us to make drawings appear on the pages, which will activate Izzy’s voiceover narrative. History only moves forward if we are able to move forward in the journal. The interesting thing about how the plot gracefully unfolds is forked. Although life as a teenager (or pre-adolescent) is not easy, the personal drama that our protagonist suffers from is added in a few pages. Obviously I’m not going to spoil it, as it’s worth following the story yourself. However, events that occur in real life directly affect the story the protagonist writes.

So, In the transitions between a diary and a made-up story, our protagonist imagines a fairy tale where a young woman inherits the post of keeper of the fireflies; beings who bring life and peace to the village. In addition, the guardian can use the power of speech which spell. Which leads to solving other puzzles in 2D platform scenarios. This fantasy world allows us to make certain decisions that partially affect subsequent events. This way, we can choose the name of the guardian, his physical appearance (light, not that he is the creator of the characters in Fallout). In addition to decisions that affect the setting, or the conversations we have with other characters.

The powers displayed by the protagonist of this side story include permanent words in some sort of spellbook and other words that come and go depend ing on the situation. With the left joystick we control the protagonist, while with the right we move the firefly that accompanies us

. This firefly allows us to select words in the spellbook and move it to where we want to apply its power. As you can see, this is a simple but powerful idea, because with options like ‘climb’ or ‘break’ we can open paths and get to inaccessible places with just one jump.

The story of the tale is fairly straightforward to begin with.. A dragon attacks the village and everything catches fire. The fireflies flee in terror and our mission is to search for them and find the dragon on the way. These fireflies make collectibles, although they also have their weight at the end of the game (and so far I can read). The journey takes us through forests, deserts, and lost ruins as we meet special characters, and the emotions of what happens in Izzy’s real life are reflected in the story moving forward.

What started out as a fairy tale becomes a search, in times of anger, despair and even depression. Well, writing is a powerful way to release what grabs our hearts and see the world in a different way. The way the two stories play out in parallel struck me as very beautiful, as we went from reading the newspaper to chasing the story; how the two storylines feed off and how Izzy evolves with every page she writes. Without a doubt, the idea is good and the execution is quite well done.

You can’t write an analysis without seeing the good, but also the bad. Lost Words Beyond the Page has an art section full of color, great ideas and lots of imagination. However, it is easy to see the source of aesthetic inspiration in Ori and the Will of the Wisps, specifically in the world built by Izzy for his fairy tale. The similarities are strong in the play of lights, ruins and 2D design with parallel layers (parallax). Not that this is plagiarism, but the similarities are reasonable. Although set to “take ideas”, it is still a good option to build on great successes.

Finally, Lost Words Beyond the Page is a beautiful game that explores the drama and emotions of youth with two parallel stories. The power of the word takes on all its meaning as we change the scenery and move forward surrounded by letters and puzzles. However, the game is quite short, and the collectibles are quite easy to find on the first round. The puzzles, on the other hand, are pretty straightforward, although it’s a cool game to share with kids or nephews.