A Normal Lost Phone

A game that turns your phone into, erm, a phone, and invites you to flick through the apps on there to work out who the owner of the phone was and why and how they lost it. The obvious comparison is Her Story, and certainly, the interactivity and overall experience is so similar that it's hard not to imagine that the developers of A Normal Lost Phone were very deliberately modelling their game on Sam Barlow's. Yet if there's any one game I'd want to compare it to, it's Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.

That's a weird comparison, but bear with me.

The thing about Brothers is that I played it right up until the end thinking of it as a decent enough, if unremarkable, adventure game, and then one thing happened that completely spun the entire experience on its head and re-contextualized and nullified every minor complaint I'd had. A Normal Lost Phone nearly manages the same trick. The game feels like it's made a mistake right out of the bat by immediately opening all the text messages and e-mails and expecting you to read through all of them (you do wonder what it could be holding back if it's immediately dumping all of that on you), and while it does cover a great deal of ground when it comes to the character's life, personality, hobbies, and relationships, the various, seemingly baseless strands it introduces feel slightly annoying, if anything. And then right near the end, you'll find the key to the entire game and all the puzzle pieces fall into place.

The reason I say it nearly manages it, though, is that I saw that twist coming a mile off. I feel bad calling it predictable, because it's not like they're invoking the most common story trope in the world or anything, but I can't get away from the fact that I predicted it before I even started playing the game. Hint: the name of the company that developed it is a pretty big clue. If I didn't see it coming, I no doubt would have marvelled at how clever the game was as I pieced together why and when everything mentioned in the game had taken place, and what the significance of some of those seemingly throwaway early messages was - but that didn't happen.

It's an enjoyable hour or so, undoubtedly a warm, human game with its heart very much in the right place, and one that manages to build up a fully-formed, relatable character. Feels like it should have been more than that, though.