Ever since I was a small child, I’ve thought that stop-motion animation is simply one of the coolest forms of human artistic expression. From “The Nightmare Before Christmas” to “Prometheus and Bob” to “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” I’ve always been dazzled by the amount of creativity and work that can go into every single frame. The prospect of a stop-motion animated game has always been incredibly tantalizing (I even played a lot of ClayFighter), even though everything I know about both game development and animation tells me what a daunting task that would be.
Fortunately for me, Johan Oettinger grew up around the same time, also loving stop-motion animation and playing games with his siblings, but actually followed through with a career as an animator. Now he’s also a game developer, directing Out of Words for WiredFly & Kong Orange and Epic Games Publishing, a two-player co-op platformer that’s entirely handcrafted. At Summer Game Fest: Play Days, I got to play a brief demo in couch co-op with Oettinger, and I cannot wait to play the full game when it comes to XBOX Series X|S in 2027, as it may be my favorite execution of a stop-motion animated game that I’ve yet seen.
Out of Words is about two young people navigating the treacherous gap between friendship and romance “in a story about the first time they held hands.” Through magical realist circumstances I’ll have to learn about when I play the full game, Kurt and Karla have isekaied into a dreamlike realm of colorful and surreal characters, in the vein of Lewis Carroll or Hayao Miyazaki’s work. Kurt and Karla are both figuratively and literally “out of words” because they have no mouths in this dream world.
It all feels evocatively metaphorical without being ham-fisted or overly literal in its allegory. That’s probably helped by the fact that it’s had a poet, Morten Søndergaard, in the core of the development team from the start. Oettinger told me that the project started with the two of them collaborating on a traditional stop-motion animated film, but that through working on it he realized that “it was actually the game that I always wanted to make.”
It’s just absolutely enchanting to take in. The cinematic scenes are all completely hand-animated in front of a camera and are on par with the work of a powerhouse like Laika (“Coraline,” “Kubo and the Two Strings”). The real magic, though, is how this extends to gameplay, where “every single element you see has been is made by human hands: the grass is cut-out paper, the water is cellophane, and so on.” The overall effect is really something.
If I felt right at home in Out of Words, it might have something to do with Oettinger growing up loving the same stop-motion animation. He cited Aardman Animation’s Wallace & Gromit series (particularly “A Grand Day Out”) as a major influence, as well as the more out-there work of the Brothers Quay (“Street of Crocodiles”) and my beloved Czech surrealist, Jan Švankmajer (“Alice,” “Faust”).
More than just nice to look at, the gameplay was also simple, but evocative. Oettinger mentioned INSIDE as one of his favorite games, and the influence is clear. Broadly we went from left to right through beautiful environments. Different sections we played had different mechanical gimmicks. In one part, surfaces covered in grass had localized gravity, allowing us to jump between the floor and ceiling in navigating through. Oettinger said how, in this part of the game, Kurt and Karla are feeling isolated from one another, and the mechanics reflect that by being individually focused.
In contrast later on, in a section where they are more engaged with one another, our relative directions of gravity were inverted—up for one was down for the other—pressing a button to pass a glowing creature between us would swap that, which meant syncing up to pass it back and forth in time to prevent one another from falling off either end of the screen. In an extended section of traversing empty void, we hit a lovely rhythm of passing it back and forth, gracefully arcing up and down across the screen in a double helix of inverted sine waves.
Oettinger told me that they prototyped nearly 200 mechanics to find the ones that properly communicated the intended feelings. The few that I experienced seemed very thoughtfully implemented from a narrative design perspective, enhancing the story through player action, rather than just providing a series of things to do between narrative beats, like the delightful variety of minigames recently in Mixtape.
Out of Words is only playable in co-op, which includes online and cross-platform, but clearly is best locally. Oettinger cited memories of playing games with his older brother and younger sister growing up, and how much he wanted to craft an experience with them in mind. Accordingly, he also designed the game to be very accessible to non-gamers. The success of Hazelite’s Spit Fiction and It Takes Two has proven there’s a definite interest in experiences built explicitly for two-player co-op, but they also demand a relatively high baseline skill of navigating 3D space with a gamepad. Out of Words will provide a much friendlier entry point into co-op gaming with simple-but-evocative mechanics that allow a wide range of players to enjoy it.
Out of Words was my biggest surprise of the whole weekend, and I can’t wait to experience the full handcrafted journey when it hits XBOX Series X|S some time in 2027.
Out of Words
Epic Games Publishing
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