Unwording Review

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 1,5h without a guide
Estimated achievement difficulty: 1/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: I wrote this solution and achievement guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, as far as I know, there are only missable achievements on day 3, you can play the other 2 days without worrying about the achievements
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: Yes/No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No, you can play on easy and still unlock all the achievements
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

I’ll start this review with the same warning as I did start my guide with:
If you’re currently down and thinking about playing this, maybe wait till you have a better day. If you still would like to play it today, make sure you don’t stop after day 1, preferable just finish the game. As the beginning can make you feel even more down, but it will get better, just like your current mood… it is just hard to see right now.

Unwording is a short puzzle game that will show you how much the thoughts in your head influence how you see the world around you. If you doubt yourself too much and you’re down, you will see the world as less colorful and find all sorts of things that will confirm the thoughts you have about yourself. This game does a wonderful job showing you how the thoughts you have don’t have to be the truth, just a perception of how you see things at that moment. it also shows a valuable lesson that this can change with time, that things look so dark one day doesn’t mean it will always stay that way, whatever your mind tells you.

I found the first day in the game very hard on an emotional level. This was because I recognize the thought pattern, but also I played this one a day I felt down. For a moment I hate the main character, especially after an action he does just before leaving for work… but it also displays how you can lash out on days you don’t feel yourself without having bad intentions.

The game starts out very blend and the character walks so slowly! That last thing really annoyed me, but later on, I learned that you can run by pushing the left shift key on your keyboard. With each day passing the main character gets a little bit less depressed and you can see that in the colors used in the game, but also that the game switches from a 2D perspective to a 2,5D perspective to a 3D perspective. It allows you to see more of the environment your characters live in with each passing day. The developer did such a powerful move with the start being so blend and a bit boring, but I can also see that this might be a risk. I hope not many people will quit the game just on day 1, as it will only get better.

There were two things I didn’t like as much. The first thing was the puzzle type of day 2. Gladly there are only a few puzzles, but that wasn’t just my kind of puzzle. Nothing bad about the puzzles, just not something I enjoyed. The second thing was that I did encounter stutters during my gameplay. Only 1 or 2, but I was afraid the game would crash, but gladly that didn’t happen.

Achievement wise the game has mostly achievements that will unlock by just playing through the game. however, on day 3 there are a bunch of missable achievements. It might be worth it to check out your achievement list or maybe my guide, which I linked above, to see what you should do during this last day. This starts at work on the third day. If you missed out on something, when you know the solutions it only takes a short amount of time getting through the game to get back to day 3, but the game has unskippable cutscenes, which will take the most time on your second playthrough.

I would like to finish this review with a message that would be nice to keep in mind in your daily life: Be kind to yourself! It is so easy to just ourselves so hard. We wouldn’t have those requirements for our friends and family but somehow it is totally okay to be so harsh to yourself. Because as long as it stays in your mind it doesn’t sound so horrible and it just becomes a normal thing. You might not even notice that thoughts go around in circles and you blamed yourself already for something when blaming yourself again just a bit later. Try to just keep going on hard days, as time will go by and maybe tomorrow will be a bit easier. And don’t feel ashamed if you need to reach out for professional help, you’re worth it!

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