Разработчик: Bento Studio
Описание
Dive into his damaged mind and experience his inner creative world through strange and wondrous tales. Help the writer reassemble his memory and thoughts in this narrative text-based puzzler. Think outside of the box, drag letters and signs around on the canvas to form pictures worth thousand words. Divided into five books tracing back the author memories, Unworded is a unique, emotionally-engaging and story-driven indie masterpiece that appeals to the inner workings of human complex minds with its poetic and dreamlike puzzles full of letters.
Artistic statement
unWorded is born from a profound love for typography. Letters not only convey meaning but can also bring a strong sense of space. We asked ourselves if we could build an entire world out of simple letters? How would it look like? What feeling would we get, if we were to immerse ourselves in such an universe?! With that came along the desire to dive into a writer's head and his thoughts, to see how memories form themselves to bubble up to the conscient mind. We finally chose a very simple but engaging gameplay experience, assembling letters to create objects, each one triggering an important memory of the author. One key aspect for us was the intimacy the player would experience with the writer, actively participating in his introspection.We really wanted to tell a story about feelings and thoughts through unWorded. The game deals with the subject of grief, it is something we all have to go through but that not easy to discuss. The player would have to live each phase of grief along with the author: shock and denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The unWorded story is about a children's book writer, who was just hospitalized after a serious accident. As his wife at his bedside reads to him fairy tales of his own creations, you dive into his mind, sharing his last thoughts as he reminisces about his life and past works, standing with him at the death's door!
The unWorded team
Bento has been making mobile games since 2010. Based in Lyon, the team is made of two passionate individuals who were brought together by a common project: making original and creative games. Benoit breathes life in the games, making art, sounds and musics, while Séverin gets the engine running with his programming. With unWorded the Bento team accomplishes their long-awaited dream of doing a narrative game conveying a truly meaningfull story!Поддерживаемые языки: english, french
Системные требования
Windows
- OS *: Windows 7 SP1+, 8, 10
- Memory: 512 MB RAM
- Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible, Shader 2.0
- DirectX: Version 9.0c
Mac
- OS: Mac OS X 10.8+
- Memory: 512 MB RAM
- Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible, Shader 2.0
Отзывы пользователей
I love the concept of this game, and the story(ies?) is presented well. The minimal design also complements the stories perfectly. You work through five different mini-stories that help the main story progress, and everything is quite abstract and deep.
The implementation isn't perfect, though. The puzzles can be rather annoying because things are so abstract that you don't even know what you're making until the game accepts your solution and animates the object. You have to be very precise with your positioning, which is quite frustrating.
Also, while the concept, story ideas, and overall storytelling are good, the actual writing is not the greatest. This could be a translation issue in English. I wanted to play the game in French, but I have no idea how to change the language because the main menu lacks normal menu elements, including language settings, and is quite buggy.
But anyway, the game is creative, unique, deep, and worth a play as a piece of art.
What I like most about it is the wonderful way of creating solutions from letters, but sometimes I got bored and I couldn't find the solution or the idea.
Mixed feelings on thumbs up or down on this.
I don't like giving negative reviews on games made with thought and heart. Which i feel this is.
But - on the other hand - I didn't enjoy it. At all. And I like words. A lot. In books, in life, in games. But was frustrated and disappointed here.
So... I'm leaving a thumbs up on this but with a warning: The idea here is really neat. And a backstory with depth and feeling. And clean, minimalist visuals. But you may find it frustrating and awkward. And I'm guessing it works best in the original French. I think it's a concept very vulnerable to cultural setting - both in language and in what is familiar figuratively and visually.
My take on this is that it tries a bit too hard, but trips itself up a bit. And also that it 's a visual style and concept that just doesn't translate that well.
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So why did I buy it. And why have I played it all the way through, not got it refunded, and am bothering with writing a review at all:
Because they 're indie devs who tried to do something a bit different, and I feel it's a sincere effort even if it didn't work for me. And I love words. A real language nerd! And I was totally pulled in by the concept of making not only words, but letters themselves, tell a story. So I read the pos. and the neg. reviews, and took a bit of a gamble on this. So - it's on me. But just... no.
Like most of the neg. reviews have said - I found the puzzles mostly just too obtuse or abstract/simplified /unfamiliar that I either couldn't work out at all what I was aiming for, or the shapes at disposal just didn't really convey an image that corresponded to what I was trying for. That ship for example - I was sure that a ship was what I was trying for, but the final picture just doesn't look much at all like how I picture a boat (and I'm from a sea-faring nation and used to boats of many kinds...). Similar with many other of the objects - a hammer doesn't look like that, or pliers, or.... Also, the text translation from French into English is a bit strained in places - which leads to textual clues that are a bit off and pointing in not-quite-right direction. Or solutions that only accept some very just-so placements of elements, even when the finished object is still very stylised/simplified and isn't a lot like the real thing anyway.
I got frustrated with this very quickly (which isn't very typical for me). I used a guide for a lot of it, just to get through to the end. Which is the main reason my total time is fairly short.
The backstory is heartfelt, and well-intentioned, is my take on this. Didn't click with me, but other reviewers have appreciated it. So this may give you some depth, if it reaches through to you.
I felt that the story-telling would have been MUCH better if they hadn't insisted on trying to make it rhyme. Which it didn't do very smoothly, in English at least, and just felt contrived and strained. Better to have gone for a straight narration, or gone for translations with a focus on flow and rhythm, rather than to try to force it into (bad) rhymes.
And the backstory of the writer and his wife and hospital - which is mixed in all along the way - felt out of pace, or out of place, or something. For me at least, it also felt a bit shallow and clichéd. It's a lot harder than one might think, to write well about grief.
I'm left with a feeling of a game and devs just .... trying too hard ?!
It's a simple game. That's the only nice thing I can say. Too many things about this "game" were not good to list.
Story 1/5
Puzzles 3/5
Sound 4/5
Graphics 5/5
UnRemarkable, unExciting, and unDerwhelming mix of letter jumble drawing puzzle and weak storytelling. It's clean, but it's unCoherent as a written art game.
This is a very interesting and unusual concept SPOILER ALERT and deeply emotional. Would I play it again? Probably not unless there is a sequel.
Thought provoking.
Kübler-Ross' stages of grief, minimalistic design, minimalistic music, poetic, a lot of letters... 90 minutes of gameplay. Nice experience, the length of the game is optimal, bought on sale for 1 euro (which seems like a reasonable price for such game).
I have finished this one today. A good atmosphere in the game and a unique concept, but it's very irritating that you have to move/connect the symbols too punctual to each other. One of the last puzzles to to with bulb is too difficult in my opinion to do without a hint on a walkthrough. So that's the main reason I don't recommand this one...
The stories are also a little bit difficult to understand very good, however I can read English pretty well. The stories are too vague to give you some satisfaction in this game...
Interesting concept and beautiful in its own way, but presentation is lackluster at best and I couldn't care less about the main drama and stories in the chapters. They are serious and talk about destructive human tendencies, but the only thing I did want past second chapter is to click through them as fast as possible.
So, I... don't really know. I guess I'll flip a coin and recommend it in case it's heads.
DuckDuckGo.com says: tails
Flipped an actual coin: tails
Rolled a die: ⚄ (5)
Well, not recommended it is then, but according to a die it isn't bad. Pick it during a sale with the entire Puzzle bundle and you likely won't regret it. Or at least may like other games in a bundle. I did like Type:Rider when I played it a few years ago.
Interesting concept and smooth gameplay, however it's not for me. I'm not sure who it's for. Stories feel too angsty for children but the gameplay feels too simplistic for adults. Also very slow paced. Fine if you look at it as an artwork rather than a game I guess.
This is a easy no from me
first the "music" if you can classify 4 notes on a 3 second loop "music" (not even joking I literally counted one of them) is super annoying and you can't even mute it and listen to your own music on your computer
second while the putting things together is the interesting thing about the game it turned out to be super tedious and annoying for a few reasons 1) many things are so poorly visualized that I didn't even know what I had made until sounds or other visuals were added to show what the item even was because not only do they do super minimalistic they also changed many aspects of the items (for example think of a basic hammer blunt on one side and flat with a notch on the other right??? well do you expect the notched side to curl 180 degrees around and almost be touching the shaft of the hammer...... welp that's what you find in this game) 2) even when you knew what you were supposed to make it took forever to try and find the correct spot for things because of reason 1
the hints were often super obscure for example when I say breathing you think......fan.....am I right????? no?????? well that literally is one of the clues in this game for that object.
they tried rhyming in the storys but they also threw in the main story during the short storys which completely threw off the rhyming vibe
the game was really short (with how little I liked the game it was actually a bit of a blessing)
all of the story's were depressing
the main story was the best thing about this game and it was ok at best because it was so short and only kinda depicted a scene
in a nut shell this game is about as interesting and fun as a teacher that asks a "open ended" question that you then have to figure out the specific answer that they want.
A fascinating game with an engaging story. Some of the puzzles were frustrating though. You could have a correct picture, but made with the smallest incorrect spacing and could therefore not progress until you made the necessary tweak. The animations and audio really brought the game to life for me though and I overall enjoyed the experience of this short, but very interesting story-telling game.
I would recommend to purchase on a sale. Not really quite worth spending too much money on for less than a couple hours of actual gameplay.
Ostensibly a typing style game, but really just a sappy soap opera with some moving of letters/shapes around to create other shapes. The 1.8 hours I took to complete the game is really all that there is. No real replay value, a plot that has no real surprises nor reason to re-experience, just blah.
I'm sure I'm a cold-hearted meanie, but I'm glad I didn't pay anywhere near full-price for this. Not at all recommended except for those...well, I have no idea who would want to play this game, really.
I suppose somebody recently experiencing loss might get some feels. There's that, anyway.
I don't really have much to say about this game. It's not a great game, but the concept was interesting and just challenging enough to be kind of fun. The color and sound design were nice, and I think the minimalistic style worked for what they were going for. It looked really polished except for some of the typing errors that really stood out. For example, there were one or two "i" that weren't capitalized. Honestly, the story was the weakest part. If you want to experience the mechanics of the game, go ahead and buy it, but don't expect to feel any real attachment. The price isn't too bad for such a short game, but if you catch it on sale, even better. I wish it had better writing and was longer, but it is what it is.
I was looking for some new relaxing (but still interesting) puzzle games, and this one sounded like it took a unique approach. I love the concept of making one thing out of other things (i.e. objects out of letters). The objects even become functional, which is a nice touch. What I did not expect was to be emotionally grabbed by this seemingly simplistic game. I won't give it away, but the ending hit harder than I ever would've expected pre-purchase. The game was short, under 90 minutes to complete it, but it was definitely worth grabbing on the winter sale. Hell, it's not expensive at normal price anyway. If you're looking for a different kind of puzzle game that still has a worthwhile story to it, this is definitely worth checking out. Music was nice, too.
On very rare occasions a game comes along that is so powerful and interesting, so moving and clever and original, that I think to myself, “Had I created such a thing, I would be content to be remembered for it, and it alone, for all time.” UNWORDED may be only the second such game in over thirty years of gaming.
The basic premise of unWorded is to form pictures from letters, based on the clues offered within a connected story. And a larger story is told by the various, seemingly unconnected stories, actually presented as individual, titled books.
unWorded can be challenging, but the underlying concepts are so crucial to all of humanity that the developers chose to make each and every puzzle accessible to pretty much every possible player. (Perhaps there was a single puzzle that took as much as five minutes, but certainly complexity of puzzle isn’t the point. Complexity of life is.) There is more wisdom in this short, simple story than more gamers are likely to find should they combine every game they might play this entire year.
These developers took a considerable risk with some of the more powerful themes concerning man’s destructive tendencies, but they felt that chance worth taking, and I salute them for it. Far too often games ignore the things we play games to forget, rather than address. This game takes no such easy outs. unWorded reaches into your heart, mind, and soul, and pulls out something you may not have known was there. And then another, and another, and another…and then squeezes all those pieces together right in front of you, too close to continue to ignore their truth, beauty and wisdom.
Play unWorded. Please.
Very cool game, made with love. Sometimes really tricky puzzles. An interesting way to make pictures out of letters. For that price a must buy.
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | Bento Studio |
| Платформы | Windows, Mac |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 31.01.2025 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 63% положительных (16) |