Happy Juice Games, Lost in Play is one of my favourite games of the year and one of the best adventure games I have ever had to pleasure to play.
If you have even a passing interest in Adventure games or love a good brain teaser, you may as well stop reading my inevitable gushing and give it a whirl. Right now.
Still not convinced. Fine, I’ll go on.
Lost in Play combines a drop-dead gorgeous animated art style with a heartwarming story and some great visual comedy. Though, what makes it stand out is how well it manages to refine the moment-to-moment mechanics in a way that mitigates most of the genre’s irritating baggage.
There is no pixel hunting because you control the game’s sibling protagonists with the analogue stick. There is almost no backtracking as each of Lost in Play’s episodes is made of self-contained areas where everything you find is guaranteed to have a use in the immediate area. The kind of mad logical leaps found in most adventure games seems less far-fetched in Lost in Play as the entire game takes place in the imaginations of two children (or does it?).
None of these things is necessarily a new idea. However, each is skillfully combined to make the player experience feel incredibly slick, which leaves your brain free to engage with the Lost in Play’s numerous brain-tickling puzzles.
Players jump into the hyperactive imaginations of Toto and Gal. Bored on a sunny afternoon, the siblings embark on a fantastical adventure that takes them from their living room to the heat death of the universe and back again.
The setting is as varied as the puzzles themselves. Although, most of the episodes see you retrieve three items. How you get them is never straightforward, and you never know what is coming next. Along with the usual item-based puzzles, the action is broken up with fun environmental twists and Professor Layton-style conundrums guaranteed to tax your grey matter.
Though the puzzles get increasingly complex as the narrative progresses, none of Lost in Play’s numerous challenges ever feel cheap or overwhelming. There’s always an answer. It is usually staring you straight in the face.
Not only is Lost in Play a joy to play the presentation is second to none. The bright and beautiful world is packed full of charming characters. Each is flawlessly animated, to the point where if you walked into the room and didn’t know what it was, you could easily mistake it for a kids’ TV series.
Likewise, the sound design is superb. From the delightful acapella that opens the game to the endearing gibberish all the characters talk to each other in, not a note feels out of place, and the characters convincingly emote despite only communicating in excited grunts and mutters.
I finished Lost in Play in a single sitting. Just like a good book, I couldn’t put it down.
With beautiful, hand-crafted visuals, expertly crafted puzzles and a story with a sense of whimsy that is bound to put a smile on your face. Lost in Play effortlessly pushes the adventure game genre to new heights.