Imagine waking up in a world where words have disappeared. Not just sound, but the very ability to speak—and yet everything around you is visual poetry. That’s the premise of “Out of Words,” a new co-op game developed by WiredFly and Kong Orange and published by Epic Games. I got an early look at the game’s tech demo during Summer Game Fest, which is not scheduled to be released until 2026, and I can tell you: rarely has a game been so silent—and yet so telling.
Real-time stop-motion
The first thing that strikes you about Out of Words is its aesthetics. The game looks like it could have been pulled straight out of a stop-motion short film. Every character, setting, and creature is hand-sculpted, with cutscenes that use frame-by-frame animation.
The two human protagonists, without mouths or speech, communicate through gestures and actions. And although this may seem minimalist, silence becomes a powerful narrative language.
The narrative is inspired by the work of award-winning Danish poet Morten Søndergaard, and this translates into the way the game’s universe mixes the strange with the sensitive. A cute flying stingray accompanies the characters and helps them navigate. Nothing makes much logical sense, but everything still connects with charming visual metaphors.
Unconventional mechanics
Out of Words isn’t just about aesthetics. The gameplay features inverted gravity mechanics, where players can run upside down and, most importantly, they need to trust each other to get through the levels. In another sequence, I tested the use of monstrous arms that emerge from the characters to grab and launch their partner like a kind of living catapult.
These elements make cooperation essential: both players must act together, coordinating movements to explore the levels and solve puzzles. Even in its early stages, Out of Words is already positioning itself as a unique experience in Epic Games’ catalog. It is a game that does not seek the obvious, that replaces graphic grandeur with artistic identity, and that transforms the absence of words into a form of emotional connection between players.
If the goal was to make a poetic and fantastic game, they are already on the right track.
