Review: Unwording – Unpuzzling

As someone who suffers from severe anxiety, I am no stranger to negative thought patterns. My brain often distorts reality in order to prepare me for potential danger; a simple daily life event could quickly turn into me summing up the worst case scenario so that I’m always prepared for potential danger.

Developed by Frostwood Interactive, Unwording is a short puzzle game in which we follow Tom over three life-changing days as he learns to push away negative thought patterns and focus on the positives in life.

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Tom will see a normal object such as a nice car, and immediately bring up the negative thought that he is poor.

Unwording is split into three sections, each representing a stage in Tom’s progress as he turns over a new leaf. Each part of the story is also shown in a different art format and we’re challenged with a new variety of puzzle, symbolizing how Tom is learning to see things from a new perspective.

At the start of Unwording, Tom wakes up on a normal work day. He commutes to the office, does his work and then goes home. In this part of the game, we’ll see that Tom will observe everyday, neutral objects and events and turn them into negative thoughts. Each neutral statement shows up as letter blocks, sometimes multiple letters share the same block and flipping them over shows another letter. We are given a negative statement to work out from the neutral one by fitting the blocks into the new phrase. For example, ‘wake up’ becomes ‘give up’ and ‘start working’ becomes ‘procrastinate’. Tom will even see two co-workers discussing a topic that he can’t make out, and will instantly assume that they are gossiping about him.

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The visual style used in the first part of the game is really unique and makes it stand out.

In this first section, we are treated to 2D visuals in chalk-style art with a pastel color palette. This was easily my favorite section of Unwording. Not only was this first puzzle type challenging as well as something that I could often figure out just by using my own way of negative thinking, but the art style was visually pleasing to look at and made the game really stand out.

To match these calming visuals is a gorgeous soundtrack by Trevor Kowalski which is easily one of the highest points of Unwording. I’d love to have this score on a studying soundtrack as it was perfect to listen to while solving puzzles and had plenty of variation to prevent it from becoming overused.

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A bird flies through the open window in Tom’s apartment, wrecking havoc on his negative life.

After this negative thought-filled day, Tom returns to his apartment where he encounters a bird nesting on his window sill. Despite Tom’s attempts to keep the bird out of his flat, it flies inside and – to Tom’s horror – poops on his phone, prohibiting him from interacting with the defecated screen for the remainder of the game. For some reason, this interaction with the bird forces Tom to change his mindset, especially after the bird also poops on his bed, pushing him to clean up his apartment.

I felt that the reasoning for Tom to change the way he viewed his life was quite jarring to the otherwise sensitive topic of Unwording which can be linked to mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. Especially when the sound effects used for the bird pooping all over Tom’s apartment are quite crude and comical (as well as, for some reason, being played at a far higher volume than any other sound effect in the game).

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Once Tom starts to see things from a new perspective, he realizes that his co-workers weren’t gossiping about him but were actually planning a party.

From here, Unwording’s visuals become 2.5D to represent Tom’s change in perspective on life. Despite the clever symbolism, I must admit that I was sad to see the chalk art-style go as the 2.5D and 3D visuals are a lot more standard. On top of this, the 2.5D camera is not very well designed; you’ll often struggle to work out where you can go, getting stuck on out-of-camera objects.

On top of this, the second day is also where Unwording’s gameplay begins to take a downfall. On the first day, the puzzles were challenging word games which consisted of the player thinking of a negative thought to match the neutral statement. However, on the second day, the bird (which is now following Tom around as he goes about his day, encouraging him to make a change in his life) breaks apart the previously crafted negative thoughts. They have now turned into jumbled up 3D word blocks which we must rotate to create a word and fulfill the sentence. There are circles at the bottom of the puzzle screen to indicate how many words we need to find.

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The second part of the game offered puzzles which really weren’t that engaging. 

Honestly, this puzzle just mainly consisted of luck as you would twirl the selection of blocks around until the screen started to glow red to indicate that you’ve come across a word. You would then adjust it until you can make out what word the game wants to use. It barely requires any intelligent input at all. And this is where Unwording stops being a puzzle game.

On the third day, Tom seems to come up with his own ways to improve his life as Unwording now gives you the option to type an interaction into a bar. The only problem is that the game wants you to use a specific word(s), so you end up wanting to “chat” to someone but the game wants you to use another verb such as “greet”. Again, this was really basic gameplay and by this point I just wanted to get to the end of Undwording despite it only being two hours long.

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Apparently this wasn’t a viable interaction.

Like the second day, the third day progresses again in its art style and is now in 3D, though shows the same problems the second day had with Unwording not fitting this style of perspective very well. Only this time you can move the camera, so you won’t get stuck so often.

Unwording is a short game, marketed as being only two hours long, though I completed it in an hour and a half. This wouldn’t be a problem if the gameplay was actually engaging enough to be impactful in this short span of time. The first third of Unwording hits this spot well, and if the puzzles had grown more challenging as it progressed, then this would have easily scored higher. Unfortunately, Unwording is barely a puzzle game at all, though the interesting topic of negative thought processes and cognitive distortions that it covers (and covers well) had so much potential.

Jess reviewed Unwording on PC with a review code.

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