A Difficult Game About Letters Review (Xbox Series X|S & PC)

Behind A Difficult Game About Letters’ crayon-based visual aesthetic is a thought-provoking and oftentimes tedious platforming experience that’s both wholesome and irritatingly enjoyable for all of the right reasons. A family-oriented game at heart, Letters doesn’t strive to make you hate the alphabet, though it doesn’t do a lot to educate you on the power or phonics, either. Rather, it paints a simple picture that, while still a beautiful hand-drawn piece of art—a world that was incubated by one of the three developers, naturally—prods you into questioning the abilities of such letters. An ‘I’ might be better at shuffling through tight spots, but what can a Q do, really? It’s your job here, as the collector of anthropomorphic alphabetic letters, to figure out what each letter can bring to the table, and how the alphabet can collectively contribute to an ascent that poses more questions than answers.

As the title openly implies, A Difficult Game About Letters isn’t an easy game, though it is a forgiving one that takes any given opportunity to saddle you with a well-needed checkpoint for when you accidentally stumble. And believe me when I say, you will stumble — a lot. But that’s sort of what this game is: an uphill struggle that just so happens to compliment strenuous play with adorable sketchbook drawings. It’s best not to look too deeply into it, for it is, in short a cute and oftentimes tricky platforming game that wears its heart on its sleeve. It’s simple, yet as close to a good example of a father-and-child project as you can get. The little details shouldn’t matter as much. Heck, I’ll give credit to the team just for finishing a game. I can barely remember a time when my daughter actually found the time to complete an illustration for one of my novels.

Of course, the idea here is simple: navigate a towering path of blocks and colorful objects as a letter. But, there is a catch: each object that you confront requires you to use a specific letter in the alphabet. For example, if you are climbing a plinth that has a hook point, then you need either an L or a T, whereas if you are sliding through confined spaces, then you will need to take full advantage of an I, and so on and so forth. But, you get the idea; letters are more or less used for tackling various obstacles of all shapes and sizes. Again, you don’t need to think on it to be able to understand the gist of the concept.

There isn’t much of a storyline for you to wax poetic with here. Rather, you have a simple task: find your best friend, who just so happens to be at the farthest pinnacle of a rather large and incredibly colorful tower. Other than that, there isn’t a great deal for you to wrap your head around. You hit start, and you begin your quest to climb to the highest point on the tower whilst activating various checkpoints along the way. And once you finish that, you start from scratch, only on a higher difficulty level. Textbook stuff, really.

While A Difficult Game About Letters doesn’t add a huge amount of complexity to the average platforming experience, it does take a lot of opportunities to add as much of its own signature charm into the gameplay as often as possible. The art, for example, centers around childish sketches and crayon-drizzled houses and other blocks and what have you. The only downside to this is that, while the initial portion of the game does include a solid variety of original sketches, they do begin to repeat themselves as the game progresses. In other words, you can expect to see most of what the game has to offer in the first ten minutes or so. After that, it becomes the case of tackling the same tasks, but in a different order. Frankly, though, unless the artist here was paid per drawing, I wouldn’t blame them for keeping to the single masterpiece. It’s a tough gig, but I respect the commitment to embellish the scene, nonetheless.

Let it be said that, while there is a rather short game here that’s somewhat predictable, it is a game that you can appreciate more under the circumstances. Unlike your big-budget indie that fosters artistic talent across hundreds of creative communities, A Difficult Game About Letters keeps to a small, almost homely feel, with just three like-minded creators who simply want to enjoy their own infusions and share them with a wider audience. I can’t talk down on any of that. It’s a cute experience, and its inclusion of a letter-based puzzle format gives it that unique touch that any indie game needs. Sure, it might not hold a candle against average top-shelf video game, but I can assure you that it is a fun, albeit goofy experience that ought to make you smile. Maybe that’s worth the price of admission alone, maybe it isn’t.

Verdict

A Difficult Game About Letters squabbles and scribbles “to the letter” in an attempt to wax familiar platforming tropes with a signature sketchbook aesthetic that is made to feel both authentic and wholesome to the casual spectator. It might not boast the algebraic complexity of a fully-fledged game, but to give credit where it’s due, it does cater to all of the right aspects of a classically cozy platforming affair, with a short but palpable plot, a structure, and just enough environmental puzzles to keep you second guessing your each and every lunge.

At the end of the day, A Difficult Game About Letters doesn’t spell out M-A-S-T-E-R-P-I-E-C-E with two open palms, though it does, on the other hand, spell out F-U-N with the select few tools and crayons in its possession. If you can base your standards around that and not, say, at an impossible height that’s on par with other technological innovations, then you should be able to enjoy A Difficult Game About Letters for the short time it sticks around to paint you a picture.