Unwording

by Aethyna May 12, 2023 | 1 Votes | 51 Played | 0 Reviews

9 rate

Genres:

Adventure , Puzzle

Graphics:

Labels:

Adventure , Word Unscrambler , Storytelling , Typing

Platforms:

Publishers:

Frostwood Interactive Unwording is a story-driven word puzzle game that puts you into the shoes of a depressed young man who is struggling with life that is until he unexpectedly gets a new feathery friend. Follow his journey as he recovers from his mental disorder and finally finds peace and a sense of happiness. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Unwording is a story-driven word puzzle game that puts you into the shoes of a depressed young man who is struggling with life that is until he unexpectedly gets a new feathery friend. Follow his journey as he recovers from his mental disorder and finally finds peace and a sense of happiness.

Plotline

In this game, you play as a depressed young man whose head is filled with negative thoughts. Everything he sees or hears turns into something negative even though they may not appear so at first glance.

However, one day, his life took a complete turn for the better when a very persistent bird made her nest on his window still. This little bird ended up pooping on his bed, and this changed his perspective on things, giving them a more positive spin, when he realized that he couldn’t just let this be.

Gameplay

Unwording is a story-driven word puzzle game. After choosing between Easy and Normal modes, the game starts off in 2D and in dull dreary colors, showing how the depressive thoughts have been weighing the poor young man down. The game presents you with prompts whenever you’re close to something that you can interact with, which usually turns out to be a word puzzle that you’ll need to solve to progress.

At the beginning, the word puzzles are quite easy even in Normal. The goal is to turn seemingly neutral phrases into negative ones, and you’ll do that by rotating the letter/two-letter blocks to find the letter/s that you need to form the new phrase. You can rotate the blocks from side to side as well as from top to bottom. You can even turn the blocks clockwise or anticlockwise just so you can position the letters correctly. Note that for some letters, like N or I, the game will underline the bottom part of the block so you’ll know how to position the block.

Once you have the letter you want, you’ll then drag and drop the blocks to the slots at the bottom. There’s a bit of strategy here since as pointed out before, some letters are singles while others are doubles. You’ll want to pay attention to the number and size of slots in the answer and try to fit in the blocks accordingly. Considering how you can rotate the blocks, sometimes, some two-letter blocks can be turned into single-letter blocks, and vice versa. It’s all about perspective here, which is befitting of the game’s theme as well.

Of course, the game does give you some clues to help you figure out the phrase needed. Using these clues don’t count as a “hint”. The game does give you 1 or 2 hints that work by instantly revealing the letter/s of that specific location on the phrase, but know that hints are limited and once used, you can’t get them back, so make sure to only use them if you need to.

What’s really interesting about Unwording is how the game, in terms of the visuals and the puzzles, evolves as the protagonist evolves. As you progress, the word puzzles you get changed from being 2D into 3D, much like how its visuals change in a similar way. Solving the puzzles still require you to rotate the blocks, but this time, the blocks are fixed in space and time, and you’ll need to rotate the whole construct to align the letters to form words, words that can then be rearranged to form phrases… positive ones this time. In a way, it does feel like I’m playing some form of 3D mahjong solitaire or 3D nonogram.

Although this change does spice things up quite a bit, it can also be frustrating in some ways because you no longer have access to hints that can instantly reveal and answer for you. Instead, the game gave you three new kinds of clues to help. The first and most pbvious is the phrases that will float around on the screen, giving you clues as to what the phrase or words may be.

The second clue is the letter blocks themselves. Letters that are crossed out are letters that will be used in the phrase you want to find. Letters in words that you have found will turn white. This is super helpful since the letters aren’t reusable for the other words within the answer. Lastly, the game also gives audio clues whenever you’re close to the configuration of a word. If you combine all three of these clues, finding all the words for the phrase won’t be too difficult.

Near to the end of the game, the word puzzles in Unwording changed yet again, presenting you with an input box instead of a typical word puzzle, where you can type in one-word instructions. There are no clues given here, besides the fact that you need to type a verb (to convey action), so it could potentially take a whole lot of tries before you stumble upon the right word, like for the radio. Apparently, typing “play” to turn on the radio isn’t acceptable here and I had to use “start”, which sounds weird.

For some interactions, the game accepts several different answers that either meant almost the same things or that the words just work for that specific interaction. For instance, when interacting with the guy at the guitar shop, you can type in “Talk” to talk to him or “Compliment” to compliment him on his excellent guitar-playing skills.

For its gameplay, Unwording offers a unique, story-driven experience that doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s also satisfying to see the protagonist’s mental health improving over the course of the game as he manages to stem the tide of negative thoughts that often flood his brain.

Graphics/ Sound

Unwording features a series of graphical styles that reminisce of Evoland. You see, the visuals here evolve a you progress, turning from dull-colored 2D to vibrant 3D animations as the protagonist changes his mindset stage by stage. Not only does the graphics changes format, the details that go into everything became more pronounced, especially during cutscenes. However, the game seems to have a fair number of graphics glitches that may disrupt immersion. For instance, at one point, the man who’s walking the dog isn’t visible so the dog looked like it is walking itself. There’s also an old man on the bench who will disappear from view, although you can still interact with him, when you approach him.

In terms of sound, the soundtracks here are designed to be relaxing to listen to. There’s also ambiance added to the game, such as the sound of rain during a rainy day, as well as sound effects, like the sound of the bird flapping from perch to perch as it follows you around.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Unwording is a delightful little indie gem that doesn’t only come with fun word puzzles to solve and a rather unique evolution-styled progression, but it also highlights how a depressed person can be constantly swamped by negative thoughts to the point where it is deliberating. Besides giving awareness, the game even provides some resources for players who are interested to learn more about this mental disorder whether for themselves or to help a friend who’s in need. For just around 3-4 bucks, depending if you get it on sale or not, the 1 hour or so game is definitely worth playing.