Graphic adventures can’t seem to settle themselves. Most new games seem to have to start at first principles and decide on their own verbs, loops, control scheme, puzzle types, difficulty, hint system… and it feels like there are more misses than hits. Which makes it all the more impressive that developer Happy Juice Games has come up with something that’s coherent, original, and a delight from start to finish.
Lost in Play, the first solo game from the Tel Aviv-based studio, has many of the hallmarks of golden-age point-and-click adventures: a cartoon style, humorously animated protagonists, item-based puzzles, and curiosity-piquing 2D scenes serving as both play space and reward for clearing the previous area. However, it also shakes off many of the classic bugbears: pixel hunting is impossible because you’re moving a character, not a cursor; using no words in the game leaves the hint system to be helpful but not too transparent; there’s very little backtracking because environments are kept small and the time in them is brief; and wacky dream logic is completely excused because you’re playing in children’s imaginations.
These are not necessarily new inventions, but they’re brought together very skilfully, making for a great player experience that avoids common minor irritations. If you’ve ever played a game where a character can’t reach something and you just think, “Well just stretch!”, Lost in Play hears you: the improvised ladder is only ever just barely high enough, and the kids get on their tip-toes to reach what you want. When you traverse four screens of a wide-open expanse, there are only two screens on the way back – Lost in Play simply won’t let you get bored.
There’s constant novelty in every aspect of the game. Puzzles aren’t just the same idea arriving over and over in new clothes; the item- and environment–based puzzles increase in complexity, at one point arriving at a hilarious mash-up of adventure game dependency chart and heist movie planning montage. On top of those core overworld puzzles, there are regular break-outs into separate little games: a board game against a seagull; a monster-escaping logic test; a physics-based skill challenge. Since you’re using a controller, there are brief button-based activities like piloting a vehicle or pumping a power gauge. The difficulty curve is impressively smooth – and although the word-free gameplay and funny animations are very kid-friendly, the trickier minigames will have grown-ups scratching their heads.
Sound design is excellent from the second the game loads into an irresistibly playful finger-clicking a capella and throughout the endearing gibberish spoken by everyone in the game – which is well acted despite being nonsense. The variety of art and animation seems endless, with almost every action having a detailed and playful special sequence in a way golden-age adventure games could never have done.
Over its five-or-so hours, Lost in Play barely puts a foot wrong, delivering cerebral gaming and effervescent entertainment. In doing so, it makes many of the genre’s design challenges look easy. Here’s hoping it inspires and influences future graphic adventures – or at least gets a sequel.
Comments 20
Always love founding genres getting new life, will have to check it out!
Sounds pretty interesting; point and click style games are so hit or miss but this one sounds creative rather than the common pitfall 'pretty but boring'. I may check it out.
“No words means no dialogue puzzles if that’s your thing”
...are you making up cons just to avoid giving it a 10?
That sounds more like a nitpick if anything.
I just don't really care for point-and-click games, but I really love the art style. It reminds me a lot of Over the Garden Wall. If this game were an animated series instead, I would absolutely watch it.
The art style looks so familiar, but I can not tell where I have seen it before.
I've probably played a hundred point-and-clicks, and every time they decide to make you directly control the character "like a console game" it's just a misery. How is that any better than pixel-hunting with the cursor? You're basically just pixel hunting using a slower, more cumbersome cursor.
@RareFan Gravity Falls cartoon?
I’m intrigued. Thanks for the good review; I might check this one out.
@Greatluigi I've occasionally seen reviewers reply to comments like this and the general consensus is a review can justifiably give a game a 8 or 9 even without any cons at all — sometimes there are no particularly bad pieces but the totality just isn't quite perfect anyways. On the flip side, some readers complain when a non-10 game gets no cons so reviewers are in a lose-lose situation.
I would agree with you the con here as stated isn't really a con. And it's quite possible it really was just an attempt to create a con. l personally would have thought 'no words means less of a story' would be a related but bigger potential con for a game like this; either way I can imagine lack of dialogue causing some issues, whether or not you care about word puzzles.
I think I'll wait for monkey Island.
Gonna get this for the visuals alone. Looks wonderful.
The IKEA assembly instructions gag is pretty hilarious. I will definitely be checking this out.
@N64-ROX Seriously? You played a lot of point and clicks? I have played about four or five and I gave up on them mainly because of pixel hunting.
But, I want to like them: some of them have great artwork, story lines, etc. But after an hour or two or ten, I get tired of the game play.
Do you have any recommendations for point and clicks that are really great, or different from the rest?
@dugan I enjoyed Thimbleweed Park.
@noz901 Cool, I will check it out! Thanks!
@dugan I may be biased due to nostalgia, but I'd say these classic LucasArts ones are the best examples:
Day of the Tentacle (funniest)
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (best adventure)
Monkey Island 1-3 (best combination)
Some great newer ones:
Technobabylon
Broken Age
Kentucky Route Zero
Milkmaid of the Milky Way
Paradigm
I also really liked the Deponia series, but I recently double dipped on the Switch version and discovered to my horror that they'd changed it so that you have to walk around with the analogue stick. My frustration at that was the impetus behind my original comment...
Thimbleweed Park was great but too long and confusing to hold my attention until the end, to be honest.
@N64-ROX Wow, thanks for the info! I appreciate it!
@Greatluigi @FishyS
I can’t speak for other reviewers, but I wouldn’t consider a “Con” always to be something the game does wrong or badly or fails to do – especially with 8s and 9s. I’m asking myself, “What sort of person might not love this game?” and trying to just flag up anything they might like to think about before buying.
This was a mini review, too, so you only have 500 words to play with. Those bullets at the end are a chance to add a brief extra comment or idea that I think could be useful to people.
Hope that sheds some light. Really great game!
@N64-ROX My top three are Sam and Max, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango.
@frogopus Yeah those three are excellent also. Lucasarts were the absolute kings of the genre. Grim Fandango has the control scheme that I don't like, but it's an all-time classic for sure and it was really unique at the time.
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