Out of Words was my star of Summer Game Fest Play Days. A simple co-op game that looks to build emotion through atmosphere and highlighting the words left unsaid between two friends, the gameplay is both intuitive enough not to require much talk, lest you get stuck, and well, you need to use your words.
Developed by Kong Orange and WiredFly and published by Epic Games, the Danish video game Out of Words is a coming-of-age story between two characters, Kurt and Karla. The long and short of it is that Kurt loves Karla, but she is about to move away.
Stuck and unsure how to share his feelings, the two best friends embark on a fantastical adventure through the world of Vokabulantis, as they confront obstacles that test their relationship and communication. without mouths, where they cannot communicate.
While other games, like Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight, have used artistic ways to capture a stop-motion animated quality, Out of Words is a fully stop-motion animated game. The use of the medium also accentuates the game’s emotional atmosphere, creating a tactile element that helps players understand the emotional way the game silently tells its story.
Wonderfully designed when it comes to mechanics, we didn’t just get the chance to play Out of Words at the Nintendo Partner Preview at Play Days, we also spoke to Game Director Johan Oettinger about the game, which has been a passion project 20 years in the making since he founded his own stop motion animation studio, WiredFly, with work that spans commercials, artistic short films, and music videos.
In our interview, we discussed the personal attachment that Oettinger brings to Out of Words, the emotional nature of stop motion animation’s tactile qualities, and what he’s learned in bringing his dream of making a stop-motion video game to life.
This Out of Words developer interview with Johan Oettinger has been edited for length and clarity.
BUT WHY THO: I played [Out of Words] earlier today, and I immediately fell in love with it. There’s something beautiful right now about seeing something handcrafted when art seems to be being pushed aside in video games by automation. I wanted to ask: why was stop-motion animation chosen for this game?
JOHAN OETTINGER: I love stop motion. I’ve been making stop-motion since I was a boy, and I built a stop-motion studio that has turned 20 this year. We [have] made a lot of films, installation art, and commercials. At [WiredFly] we’ve been quite successful in the art scene for short films and won a lot of prizes there.
But the big dream was always to make games, specifically stop-motion games. It was my childhood dream, because I have some of the fondest memories playing games with my siblings, my little sister, and my big brother, but always playing games with them. With my sister [we played] The Sims, or other games like that, and with my brother, it was point and click adventures, RTS, and a lot of games like that. This urge to make something that is two-player co-op was the big dream, the childhood dream.
It is very specifically this game, a two-player co-op stop-motion animated action adventure storytelling game with characters, where the gameplay is taken very, very seriously. Bringing those two loves together: stop-motion and games, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. This is the first of many games I want to make with the medium.
“This is the story where I don’t lose her.”
BUT WHY THO: Hearing that, it must be exciting to see the story resonate with people. The funny thing is, the two characters look very much like my husband and me, and it just… it hit me so hard. How did you [come up with the idea] for this narrative?
Especially when it comes to building a really emotional story, and not letting the two characters immediately talk to each other to take the player through everything.
JOHAN OETTINGER: Thank you for asking that. I think you’re spot on. I built the world with a poet, a famous poet, Morten Søndergaard, and his idea of falling into language. I love that idea, because language has always been very hard for me as a dialectic, and also words don’t come easily, especially when you are at the age [that Kurt and Karla are].
I love coming-of-age stories and storytelling like that. But, Kurt and Karla’s story is based on my in losing my best friend. At that age, girls are smarter and stuff. She tried to tell me, but she just couldn’t get the right words out, and I lost her. This is the story where I don’t lose her. I think it’s something that everybody can really resonate with, because everybody has something that they’ve left unsaid [at some point].
BUT WHY THO: What are you hoping your players tap into as they’re playing Out of Words with somebody else?
JOHAN OETTINGER: I think it’s going to depend a lot on who plays it, and I think to me it’s very broad, and that’s also why it’s meant to be very inviting. Also, the difficulty level is quite modest, so a gamer or a non-gamer can play it like a gateway [game].
My favorite things are games where a son can even ask his mother, “Let’s play this game. Then you’ll know why I love games so much.” And then she will get into it, and they will have this whole conversation. And [that conversation] will be very different than if it were you and your husband, where I think you would connect.
Your question is so spot on, because that is the big dream with Out of Words. [Kurt and Klara] lose their language, they lose their mouths, and the whole conversation between the two main characters is moved to the sofa, or online over Discord. Then, from the simplest thing to “I’ll catch you, just jump. One, two, three, Jump!” Maybe even talking about the themes, all the way down to the intellectual parts of [Out of Words].
BUT WHY THO: I also wanted to ask, what was the most challenging part of making a stop motion animation game? Is there maybe something easy that somebody might not be thinking of when they’re playing Out of Words?
JOHAN OETTINGER: It’s a good question. I think—maybe this isn’t a very satisfying answer—because my studio is turning 20 this year. Stop-motion is the extreme sport of animation. Yes, when you get good at it, it is very, very fast and very, very agile, and the materials we use are off-the-shelf, and you are playing around. Stop-motion animation is a very playful, very definitive medium. You have to be very precise and unchanging.
But games—actually, maybe that’s actually a great answer! Game development is not like that. It’s not. It’s very iterative in nature. Merging those two art forms is a really big clash, because every choice you make in a stop-motion matters.
Let’s say you’re building something, and it has to have a fabric for the costume. When you measure, you make the pattern, and you cut. Then that cut you cannot undo once it’s done. Whereas making a game is an iterative process, and you have to have user experience as well. The way that a story is told is very much about how you meet the world.
You have to find out how to bridge those two [ways of creation], and actually come in quite late with the props and the animation and stuff. We have to make sure that the game design can be iterative, and then dress it up and do all the art in there after, the art direction, I mean. The dream is that it should look as close as possible to being recorded on a stage in front of the camera.
BUT WHY THO: Do you have a favorite piece of the world that y’all have made?
JOHAN OETTINGER: [laughs] I mean, everything in it is my favorite, because it’s all there. Out of Words is very much, in some of its parts, a part of me. I love the meadow, because it is the meadow that I grew up [in] on the west coast of Denmark. These dunes, and the way the grass moves, and the wind, I love this. I love the moody parts, the quiet parts. There is some lovely calming.
Did you play the demo last year?
BUT WHY THO: Yes, I did!
JOHAN OETTINGER: The you saw! Those calming bits and the way they turned out. I think it is wonderful.
“Even sitting with Hideo Kojima last year, he got it, and that’s—I think, what was surprising to me, is that people relating to [Out of Words] meant more than I thought it would.”
BUT WHY THO: One of the things that I love to ask every developer that I talk to is the same question across the board. Everybody has many different answers, so it can be big or small. It’s because when we make something, we put so much of ourselves into it, and hearing how this is your [personal] story, you’ve put so much of who you are into this game.
I also feel like when we do that, it gives back to us and teaches us things about ourselves. So, I wanted to ask, throughout the development process for this game, what have you learned about yourself that you maybe didn’t know before?
JOHAN OETTINGER: Oh, that’s a good one. [laughs] I think what I learned by coming here now, but also at Summer Game Fest [Play Days] last year—that it was the first time we actually showed it—and I think it’s when I realized that when you show someone something, you want to make something that’s true. Meaning that you are trying to make something that, if [a player] found it and they didn’t know anything about it, it would mean the world to them still
Sometimes, in creation, it’s hard to make a thing, anything really. Then, just that reception, [when someone relates to it], the dream is that [your creation] finds an audience. And then, people react to it and get it. Even sitting with Hideo Kojima last year, he got it, and that’s—I think, what was surprising to me, is that people relating to [Out of Words] meant more than I thought it would. Just meeting the audience is really beautiful.
“The big dream was always to make games”
BUT WHY THO: Thank you so much for sharing that. I truly feel like we need more art, more handmade things. There’s a tactile quality to it, even when you’re playing a video game. As I was playing the demo, it felt like I could grab onto it and hold on to it. For some reason, that feels amazing.
JOHAN OETTINGER: That’s the dream. What you said is spot on. That’s the whole of my big childhood love of stop-motion. This, for me, gets so real because we are so connected to surfaces and we’re so connected to tactileness and material. We know exactly how a woolen sweater feels, and we know exactly how it smells.
Then, when you get to the dreamers, when you get to control that character made of that wool, and pressing the button, holding the button, walking through the mud [with them], then you know exactly how that feels. That elevates into something quite magical… for me, at least. The characters become just the most magical, distilled version of reality, yet they are real.
BUT WHY THO: It’s very beautiful.
JOHAN OETTINGER: You know, it really is.