Out of words and into language

It was in the year 2000 that I stood tired and a little out of it at a traffic light in Paris. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the green and red light-figures jump out of the traffic light, slide down the pole and jump into the O in the word STOP that was written on the asphalt in front of me. And I jumped with them – out of words…!

The world I came to is called Vokabulantis and I pursued the two creatures as best I could until I had to give up and let myself be overwhelmed by all the other creatures in that world. For I had fallen into a whole new dimension, a dimension I would later find out was LANGUAGE. For language had momentarily stopped working and I had fallen into the realms and lands of language. Since then, the vision I had in a fraction of a second has unfolded into a whole universe – it has in every way jumped out of words and become something in itself.

10 years later, I met stop-motion director Johan Oettinger and a few years after that, game producer Esben Kjær Ravn. And since then the universe has only grown bigger. The story has since become the fairy tale of Kurt and Karla who one day at a traffic light fall into the world of Vokabulantis. A friendship story that turns into a love story, an insurmountable task to save the language from ruin, and a whole gallery of creatures and phenomena that all have their agenda to advance. The doubt that hovered between the two children when they fell takes physical form and becomes a small friendly creature, the Aleph, that is their guide and companion. Along the journey, Kurt and Karla mature and get to know new sides of each other, and what seemed like an impossibility becomes an adventure that encompasses both the smallest and the biggest things in language, love and life.

We’ve all been at a loss for words, and we’ve all had to learn to master language. And it’s not easy! When we were very young, we came to language from the outside, and we had to learn to master something that seemed completely unmanageable. The computer game Out Of Words is Alice in Wonderland meeting Spirited Away, it’s the story of the first trembling steps from friendship to love, and it is the task of healing a language and a world that has literally fallen apart.

– Morten Søndergaard

Out Of Words
Find your lost voices in a co-op platformer adventure. Get carried away by love and language in a world on the brink of destruction. Together with a friend, you explore the wild, colorful realm of Vokabulantis as Kurt and Karla in a story about the first time they held hands — where everything you see is crafted by hand.

A Hand-Crafted Adventure
Puppet builders and programmers, costume makers and QA, stop-motion and cg artists, musicians and game designers, writers and voice actors side by side for thousands of hours: such is the unique game development team behind Out of Words. Springing out of the narrative idea of poet Morten Søndergaard, co-developers WiredFly and Kong Orange carefully designed and crafted every character, environment and co-op mechanic to tell a story with a distinctly human touch.

A Journey For Two
Whether solving puzzles in ancient catacombs or performing death-defying stunts as a destructive Golem among the clay skyscrapers of Nounberg, this is a journey for two. Surviving the adventure will require cooperation, communication and perfect timing between you and your co-player.

A Story About Finding The Words
A world is at stake – and even more importantly: a relationship. Kurt and Karla become entangled in a power struggle between immortal beings and a battle for the future of language itself, but underneath is an intimate story about the wonders and dangers of falling in love. Kurt and Karla may save the wonderland of words – but at what cost to their relationship?