Walking into Summer Game Fest 2025, I expected the usual: overpriced snacks 🍿, cringe-worthy presentations, and trailers that promise the moon but deliver a moldy potato 🥔.
What I didn’t expect was to be subjected to a stop-motion animated game about friendship and communication. Out of Words, the brainchild of director Johan Oettinger and his band of merry hipsters at Kong Orange, claims to represent something “truly special” in an industry drowning in explosions and dubstep. Yeah, right. 🙄
The game’s premise is as deceptively simple as a politician’s promise and just as likely to leave you feeling empty inside. Two best friends, Kurt and Karla, get yeeted into the “mysterious” world of Vokabulantis because… wait for it… they can’t spit out their feelings. 🤯 Their mouths vanish (thank God, one less thing to animate), forcing them to cooperate and understand each other. Oh, and they make a new friend made out of their connection. Because nothing says “original” like a friendship golem. 🗿
During my “hands-on” time (which mostly involved trying not to spill my lukewarm energy drink on the clay figures), the cooperative mechanics were about as intuitive as trying to assemble IKEA furniture without the instructions. 🪑 You have to work together! Groundbreaking! One “memorable” sequence stuck me inside a clay golem, and I had to control its hands. Riveting stuff. It’s unique and familiar, like eating the same sandwich you’ve had for lunch every day for the past 10 years. 🥪
The gameplay doesn’t reinvent the wheel, unless the wheel is made of clay and rolls downhill very slowly. 🐌 It strikes a “delicate balance” between accessibility and challenge, which is PR speak for “easy enough for your grandma to play but boring enough to make her fall asleep.” 😴
Physics-defying puzzles require communication, or at least grunts and frustrated sighs, as you navigate ancient catacombs or clay skyscrapers. One puzzle involves manipulating gravity. One player falls normally, while the other falls toward the ceiling. It’s a metaphor for how relationships feel, but instead of deep, meaningful emotions, you get clay people doing acrobatics. 🤸♀️
What “worked” for me in Out of Words is the developers’ attempt to inject emotional maturity into the experience, asking “meaningful” questions without “taking away from the gameplay.” Translation: they’re trying to make you think without making you rage quit. It’s not about “relationship-testing challenges” or “competitive mechanics,” because who needs conflict when you can have bland cooperation? Instead, it focuses on “genuine vulnerability,” which is just a fancy way of saying “awkward teenage romance.” 💘
The Alice in Wonderland/Wizard of Oz-style fall occurs when Kurt and Karla are about to say something new. It’s a metaphor for anyone who’s ever struggled to find the right words, or anyone who’s ever tripped and fallen into a pile of laundry. 🧺
Even from just watching the trailer, I was struck by how unique the game looked. It blends the surreal, the comedic, and the creepy into an experience that feels “truly special.” Or maybe it just feels like a fever dream after eating too much cheese before bed. 🧀 It feels like a “passion project,” which is code for “we spent way too much time and money on this, please buy it.” 🥺
The technical achievement of translating stop-motion artistry into interactive entertainment is, admittedly, kind of impressive. Cutscenes use traditional stop-motion, while gameplay sequences use handcrafted models brought to life through photogrammetry and light scanning. The transition is “seamless,” unless you’re looking closely, in which case you’ll see all the seams. 👀
Out of Words feels far more complex than its cute façade suggests. It’s a story about communication, vulnerability, and the courage to express our deepest feelings. Or it’s a game about clay people doing clay things in a clay world. In a gaming landscape dominated by conflict and competition, this handcrafted love story offers something “genuinely different.” Like a participation trophy in a world of esports championships. 🏆 When it launches in 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via the Epic Games Store, it may well redefine what we expect from cooperative gaming experiences. Or it may just fade into obscurity like every other indie game that tries too hard to be “meaningful.” 🤷♀️
Pixel P. Snarkbyte, widely regarded as the “Shakespeare of Sh*tposts,” is a video game expert with a unique knack for turning pixels into punchlines.
Born in the small town of Respawn, Pennsylvania, Pixel grew up mashing buttons on an ancient NES controller, firmly believing that “blowing into the cartridge” was a sacred ritual passed down through generations.
Pixel P. Snarkbyte: proving that life, much like a buggy open-world game, is better with a little lag-induced chaos.
