10 Awesome 2021 Video Games You Missed (So Far)
3. Lost Words: Beyond The Page
Lost Words: Beyond the Page is one of the year's most creative and innovative platformers to date, a seemingly simple and thoroughly charming riff on an overstuffed genre.
This three-hour narrative adventure that takes place in the diary entries of a young girl, Izzy, who is at once writing the fantastical central story and coming to terms with loss in her own life.
The game splits players between puzzle-platformer gameplay and an unexpectedly affecting meta-narrative, though the meat of the experience is its central conceit: using your arsenal of words to manipulate the environment.
If you need a pillar to rise up to transport you to the next area, you need to select the word "rise" from your journal and drop it over said pillar. Similarly if you need to break an obstacle, you'll have to pick "break" from your vocabulary. You get the idea.
Though there's very little in the way of difficulty here, Lost Words succeeds on the strength of its unique concept, appealing visuals, wonderful voice acting, and generally cosy atmosphere.