Lost in Play, a review of an adventure between fairy tale, dream and cartoon

Growing up, the art of play is not learned, and the magic of some childhood pastimes is inexorably lost without even realizing it. This creative process was saved and used as a starting point for a great adventure. Happy Juice GamesStaging the incredible journey of a brother and a sister, it succeeds in representing all the evocative power of children’s games on the screen. Let’s find out in this Lost in Play review.

Starting in their living room, Toto and Gal find themselves on a hallucinatory adventure. It’s clearly a paroxysm driven representation, but the dynamics and atmospheres that emerge from this strange adventure aren’t far off from the incredible tales of afternoons spent with siblings inventing epic tales about possible challenges.

This sense of magic is perfectly rendered in Lost in Play and is the main characterizing element of the entire game, supported by an ingenious graphic style reminiscent of cartoons such as Gravity Falls and Adventure Time, and sharing with them weirdness and humor as a game. fundamental to the representation of the world. Beneath all these wonderspoint and click graphic adventure With very traditional elements, it can offer interesting moments of challenge that support a less complex but still very pleasant experience than others.

A story without words

It’s not easy to understand exactly what happened in Lost in Play, but the title already provides a pretty accurate description of the situation Toto and Gal find themselves in: playing from the living room to the garden outside the house, two kids with vivid imaginations suddenly find themselves following some of the rules of the typical games they spend their afternoons in, but also putting them in front of epic and exciting challenges, searching for treasure and finally making their way home. With heroes thrown from one situation to another, the environments change abruptly, going from fantasy to fairy tale, from fake horror to post-apocalyptic, all filtered through the special humorous vision of the writers who have managed to perfectly embody a real interactive cartoon.

There storytelling it does not use words, yet it is completely understandable: characters and creatures communicate through strange strings and various sounds in a completely unknown language, but their situations are easy to read, albeit wildly, and the sequence of events represents a kind of representation. From challenging Toto and Gal’s monsters in dark forests, to surviving a nautical adventure complete with a Pinocchio-style whale, to escaping a wasteland by building a mechanical dragon, to entering a spooky fairytale castle escaping from guards, just to name a few examples. All this is shown disrespectfully humor It all hangs in a truly remarkable balance between this sometimes crazy comedy and the dreamy and dreamy atmosphere of children’s stories, which focuses on absurd creatures and cartoonish characters, as well as completely out-of-the-box situations.

Riddles and puzzles

Like any self-respecting graphic adventure, Lost in Play consists of explorable areas, each containing several. puzzles to be solved To continue, it usually points to a main goal that must be achieved in order to move on to the next area. As is often the case with more modern games of this genre, the console control system allows you to move the character directly, highlighting interactive objects and elements of the scenario as soon as you get close to its range. The interface is very simplified, it only allows a predetermined action to interact with NPCs and objects in the background, so it is also possible to make simple combinations with inventory items. Offers a good progression in terms of puzzles difficultyAlthough there are almost no particularly complex and layered puzzles over the various stages, starting from the basic situations to reach more complex puzzles in the most advanced and large areas: usually each puzzle is quite “self-sufficient”, with an object that unlocks a certain situation and allows you to continue other puzzles .

In general, the difficulty level is never too high, and in any case, an excellent help system can help you save yourself in the most difficult moments. On the other hand, the choice not to include any kind of standard verbal communication necessarily simplifies the understanding of puzzles, limiting them to an easily understandable logical scheme: this does not mean that the solution should be equally trivial, but obviously it does. the absence of some kind of clear and complex narrative fabric that connects objects, NPCs, and game situations.

On the contrary, Lost in Play does a great job of clarifying the purpose and operation of the puzzles, often presenting them as separate gameplay moments, but still well immersed in the strange world that is being staged. The toughest challenges are probably linked to real logic mini-games that have often been suggested throughout history: in these cases, we find ourselves compelled to take part in games that disrupt the action and present new and different situations in the game. It might seem like a bit of an easy way out in terms of puzzle design, because their complete isolation from context allows them to suggest different types of puzzles that can raise the difficulty level regardless of their connection to the levels, but it’s still very engaging and well-studied.

a cartoon story

The most striking feature of Lost in Play is clearly graphic style It was acknowledged that became a major identity element for the Happy Juice Games production. The character design, the beat with which the scripts are drawn, the animations, the colors and the sound accompaniment all contribute to a truly top-notch aesthetic that stems from a truly high-profile artistic direction despite the team’s small size. The feeling is to be inside a truly interactive cartoon, but designed on the basis of a real game where all the aesthetic elements are not just a kit, but part of the overall narrative and structure of the world. In Lost in Play, we immerse ourselves in a wonderful alternate reality that is both delightful and surprising, that we can’t wait to gradually explore new levels.

Me too’interface It is part of the overall cartoon style, trying to remain as stealthy and minimally invasive as possible, thus adding to the intuitiveness that characterizes the gaming experience. In fact, after the first intro sequence, it’s almost hard to tell when the real adventure begins, as the transition between the narrative and interaction phases is completely fluid and gapless thanks to the gorgeous animations and also the great work done. On the front side of the interface, which combines commands and elements related to solving games and puzzles into an organic whole with the scene represented on the screen. In light of all this, Lost in Play is a true audiovisual show that can truly captivate anyone.