PEGBJRE: Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story and Village Monsters
Back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story is a narrative puzzle game made by Accidental Queens, a trio dev team out of France assisted— hang on, haven’t I said that already?
This is indeed the sequel to the previous title within the bundle, specifically on page 4, called ‘A Normal Lost Phone’. Although it is not a direct sequel to the events that we went through in our last phone dive, players are in the same predicament. There is a phone that has been found, with no signal and is unlocked for some reason, and it is up to the player to discover why this phone is lying around at our location. Similar situation, same problem, yet there’s a different story to be found within. As a fun little experiment, I will be looking at this game not only as its own adventure, but as how it compares to the original deductive puzzle title since I’ve already written about the original.
Once again, Another Lost Phone is a mystery narrative puzzle title masked in the shape of a phone, where players will pour through pieces of another’s memories via texts, pictures, emails, and work contacts to understand the situation. Puzzles are solved by remembering dates, times, combining numbers together and reading between the lines. This time around follows the story of Laura, the original owner of the phone, and her… seemingly normal life?
Unlike the previous title, the only inkling I had of the overall plot was from the description of the game alone — if I had not read it, I most likely would have been second guessing myself the entire time. The writing team has stepped up their game for Another Lost Phone, leaving a paper trail of information that refuses to share the full story until players have uncovered certain elements. This wasn’t just me second-guessing myself thanks to the ambiguous writing, but actively being unable to pinpoint who or what the cause of her disappearance was besides the hint I had been given. Even as the story unraveled I continued to ping pong between guesses before finally finding the evidence I was looking for to uncover the ugly truth that had been hidden within. Following the twist, all of the old files and information feels painted in a new light, completely devoid of the original thought and meaning they may have had.
What didn’t erode my confidence in my answer was the puzzles, which again I had no right feeling as smart as I did solving. They were the same style as before, yet they felt cleaner and more varied than in the previous iteration; while there had been some issues with dates in the first game, Another Lost Phone avoids ambiguity in its puzzles by focusing on universal aspects such as years and addresses. This is also not to mention the added information that is intentionally left to throw off players, or small pieces that can be easily missed if not looked at analytically, especially with the big puzzle that unravels the phone and the plot.
If you have another hour to spare, Another Lost Phone: Laura’s Story will allow you to empathize with another stranger once again, uncovering her life as you crack codes within her phone. The conversations are life like once again, reading as many of us would text — emojis and all — and the soundtrack is perfectly melancholy to fit the mood. If you can, dive in once again and find the answers for yourself to Laura’s lost phone.
Village monsters is a life simulation made by Warpdogs, the studio name for the solo indie dev Josh Bossie. Players are a human who has mysteriously arrived in a village that is unlike any other; there are no humans in it. Instead, the protagonist is the odd one out in a village full of monsters of all kinds, singled out immediately as unnatural. Thankfully, the narrator decides against it and the mayor adopts the human into the village, and begins the tale of reunification and putting the human to ‘work’.
Much like other life simulations such as Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, players are given a set of loose instructions on what they actually ‘have to do’. The village is in need of beautification within 2 years or else it will be paved over, so it is up to the human to bring the people together while adding as much to the town as possible. To this end, players are given options from finding artifacts to donate to the museum to add cultural significance to the region, to cultivating gardens to make the village pretty. There is also a ‘glitchroot’ that needs exterminating, in which the village is being eaten by broken assets on trees, bridges, islands and more. Everything else, however, is completely up to the player; there are adventures in spelunking to attend, festivals to enjoy, animals to tame and TV to watch.
What compels many forward, especially myself, was the vast cast of characters within the village, which I found at least 2 dozen of them. They vary in lifestyles and types, all going about their day trying to keep the town afloat while also somehow not caring too much about its future. Players can interact with them all daily to learn more about them and gain hearts, which allow for more intimate heart to heart conversations about their lives and feelings. There’s the retired succubus, the scared skeleton, the hippy satyr, the frost giant running the inn and so many more scattered throughout the land for players to find and bond with. The general tone of dialogue is kept light and tongue-in-cheek, cracking fun at themselves and others while also being possibly aware of the absurdity of their situation. The narrator themself even mentions their own speech is dragging and that someone needs to get the mayor before the title even starts. The ‘glitchroot’ is a big player in this attitude, stopping players from moving on due to ‘things being broken’ as if the game hadn’t fixed itself yet and was requiring the player to fix it themselves in order to continue.
There a lot going on in this title, still in its early stage of development but containing quite a lot of heart and content for anyone to enjoy. It’s completely casual, with few if any deadlines that I could find while still keeping the world fresh and exciting. The start is a tad slow and lacking direction unfortunately, I presume due to my unfamiliarity with most ‘village simulations’, but once you get a feel for the world and its systems it begins to open up and allow for dozens of activities. Village simulation fans, especially those that enjoy witty yet wholesome dialogue will especially wish to watch the development of this title and see how it unfolds.
