Lost Words: Beyond the Page is a puzzle-platformer developed by Sketchbook Games, Fourth Slate, and Fourth Slate Limited, and published by Modus Games. Lost Words tells a beautifully written story wrapped around an entertaining gameplay loop that exists to keep pushing the player forward through the tale.
The story of Lost Words follows a young girl named Izzy, who decides to start filling out a journal as she hopes to one day become a writer. Izzy creates a character (the player can choose several names, but she'll be referred to as Grace from this point on), who is a girl residing in a fantasy realm. Lost Words takes place in two settings, with the girl controlling her imagined avatar in both. In the journal sections of the game, the player uses the words written in the journal as platforms and can influence parts of the page to solve simple puzzles. These segments of the game include some absolutely gorgeous watercolor visuals, representing Izzy's memories of the past.
These segments of Lost Words: Beyond the Page are fully narrated and the voice work is top-notch, which helps form an emotional attachment to Izzy's story. The writing in Lost Words (created by Rhianna Pratchett, the lead writer of Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider) is also stellar. It's difficult to say too much about the content of the story without spoiling the experience, especially as the game only lasts for a couple of hours. In short, Lost Pages starts out as a whimsical story about a young girl's relationship with her grandmother, only to take a somber turn, with her fantasy world changing as a result.
The other sections of the game involve the story Izzy is telling, where the player controls Grace as she explores various fantasy stages, like deserts and underwater cities. These games use 3D visuals to emulate a 2D art style, and they don't pop as much as the graphics from the journal sections of the game. Grace is a Guardian of the Fireflies, which means she has her own magical firefly protector. The player controls Grace with the left stick and the firefly with the right stick. The aim of each stage is to guide Grace to the end while removing obstacles with the firefly.
As the story progresses, Grace finds magical words which can be conjured at any time. These are guided with the firefly to solve puzzles, such as using the "Break" word to destroy barriers and "Repair" to fix broken bridges. The puzzles in the game are fairly basic, with most of them amounting to trying different words on a single obstacle. This is a great video game concept that could easily form the basis of a more fleshed-out experience, but in Lost Words, these puzzles are just temporary distractions, almost as if to remind everyone that they're experiencing a video game.
The story of Lost Words manages to be sad and beautiful all at once. The game only takes a couple of hours to finish and it's never particularly challenging, but that's because it exists as a medium for telling its story. The production of the game is stellar in of its audio and visuals, and the brief glimpse that players are given into Izzy's life is a memorable one. It falls into the niche of the short indie puzzle game that aims to pull at the heartstrings, and it succeeds in telling an engaging story about dealing with grief while using the video game medium to keep players hooked along the way.
Lost Words: Beyond the Page will be released for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on April 6, 2021, and is currently available on Google Stadia. Screen Rant was provided with a digital code for the Switch version of the game for the purposes of this review.
