Out of Words

When planning for Summer Game Fest earlier this year, one of my fellow editors had a scheduling conflict, so I took some game appointments off his hands. One of them, a game called Vokabulantis at the time, was something I wasn’t familiar with, and in an uncharacteristic move for me, I went in totally blind. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be one of my favorite games of the show.

Now called Out of Words, this debut platformer from Kong Orange and WiredFly is a side-scrolling stop-motion co-op adventure. You and a friend play as Kurt and Karla, two teenagers who fall into a mysterious wonderland and find their mouths have disappeared. According to game director Johan Oettinger, while conversation used to flow easily, this change represents new emotions, making it hard to pick the right things to say. “Of course, it’s a love story,” he says. “It’s a coming-of-age story.”