HomeReviewsKind Words 2 (Lofi City Pop)
Kind Words 2 review: as good-hearted as a city built on the internet can getWorriers Anonymous
Worriers Anonymous
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Popcannibal
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Popcannibal
It’s a simple world of comfortable and colourful dioramas, which you navigate as a big-eyed avatar in cute glasses or baggy tracksuit bottoms. Yes, there’s a fashion shop with a limited collection of clothes. And your own home (a simple room with a window and a writing desk) can be decked out with items and decorations earned as gifts from other players. But this isn’t really the type of game about investing in your character’s appearance. It’s more about the act of writing to others.
Kind Words 2 (lofi city pop) - Launch TrailerWatch on YouTube
Kind Words 2 (lofi city pop) - Launch Trailer
There are a bunch of ways to communicate. The one that will feel familiar to players of the firstKind Wordsis the act of sitting at your writing desk and replying to “requests”. These are short cards another player has posted, lamenting recent break-ups or venting about an annoying family member. You type out a reply to these and send it off. Or you offer your own worry as a prompt and wait for the advice and sympathies to roll in.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Popcannibal
I sent off a letter in which I worried about a recent disastrous moving plan (an apartment I was due to move into fell through). I got three responses - two of which felt nice to hear but didn’t shift my feelings all that much. The final one, however, made me feel better simply because the reply came from someone in a very similar position to me. Sometimes all it takes is to be shown you’re not alone. This is something Kind Words 2 does a lot.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Popcannibal
At the top of a mountain, there’s also a bench where you can look at the stars and make a wish. I found something particularly moving about this spot. It was stirring to just sit here for a moment, listening to the game’s lo-fi warbles and reading people’s desires. Their hopes for a steady job, a healthier body, more cats. Overwhelmingly, people wish for connection: friendships, family, and romance. Given thatclose relationships are increasingly found to be the basis for a life of happiness, it makes sense that loneliness is the number one source of hurt.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Popcannibal
Your requests and prompts can feel helpful in the short term, in other words. I struggled for years to discern the difference between “personal” thoughts and “private” thoughts. Still do sometimes. But more and more I understand that sharing a messy bit of your brain is actually a type of social glue. This is just another avenue for practising the habit of sheepish self-revelation. It feels good to throw paper aeroplanes! Even if doing it IRL is healthier.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Popcannibal
As for the replies you get, it’s easy to make fun of the truisms and platitudes that come most freely to people when we’re asked to sympathise with others. (“It will all work out!” … “Plenty more fish in the sea!") And it can feel like there’s an element of performance to some responses you get. But it’s also hard to judge the author’s level of authenticity from behind an avatar. If you can give people the benefit of the doubt, even a cliché can be heartwarming. And I say this as a person whohatesclichés, yet has felt their worth firsthand.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Popcannibal
Relationships don’t just encompass those with whom we drink our pumpkin spice lattes, or those we work beside, or take out to the cinema, or plan a roadtrip with. There is meaning in the anecdote you share with a train conductor, the mini-rant about the local council you have with a fellow dog walker, even (god forbid) the blue joke you get from a taxi driver. Kind Words 2 isn’t about forming friendships (it admits as much when it asks you never to identify yourself). It isn’t even about community, as every live service game seemingly wants to be for its own purposes. It’s simply about passing someone in the street, seeing their hurt, and telling them it isn’t the end of the world.
