Letter Lost occupies a niche that’s steadily growing in the indie horror game sector. It’s the type of game where you’re undertaking a normally mundane task, and right when you’re getting lost in it, it sneaks up and scares you. Like you’re tasked with repairing PCs day in and day out, and suddenly Sadako starts crawling out of a monitor behind you. It’s a genre I rather like. Giving me a repetitive task to get lost in causes me to lower my guard, so spooks hit a lot harder. In Letter Lost‘s case, we’re stamping letters and packages, while a clock loudly ticks behind us.
Admittedly, Letter Lost keeps the horror bubbling in the background. No jumpscares here, which is refreshing. Instead, it’s more about the desperate struggle to escape – and the growing realisation that it’s impossible. Letter Lost is attempting to stitch together work simulator, puzzle game, and horror game. It’s an undeniably ambitious task. Letter Lost does very well at keeping the pressure high, forcing you to solve puzzles against the clock. That said, when you’re this ambitious, there are going to be plenty of moments where the stitches become unpicked.
Signed, Sealed & Delivered
Letter Lost opens with us waking up in a dungeon, which isn’t a great omen to be honest. Once we find a way out of our cell, we stumble out into, of all things, a post office. Then the phone rings and our new ‘supervisor’, Liv, tells us that we’ve got a brand new job. We’re to stamp letters, pop them in the right chute and be in bed by eight. Oh and we can’t leave, and we’re totally being punished for something or other. Have fun! Our only ‘human’ contact is the people that come to the window to post letters, but they seem pretty out of it too.
Being the new postmaster, our main responsibilities are to post letters and send off packages. There are five regions of Kharnym, the island we’re supposedly on, and each has their own stamp. Parcels need to be stamped, scanned and then packed on to the delivery truck. The truck bed has limited space and the packages are all awkward shapes, so you need to cram in as many on a day as you can. Things start off easy, with just three of the regions to worry about, but quickly get more complicated. New rules, called ‘wrinkles’, are introduced each day. Sometimes things need to be returned to sender, sometimes they need to be flushed down the toilet. It’s complicated.
Having the day end at eight brings in a level of stress, particularly as after a week: everything loops and we’re back in the dungeon. Granted, that does remove some of the fear of failure from proceedings, but Letter Lost works because, at heart, it’s a puzzle game. It takes inspiration from Blue Prince, where the puzzles are hidden all over the place. You’ve essentially got to find them, and find a solution while still trying to keep on top of the post. The puzzles are quite enjoyable, and I was finding new ones right up until the credits. The stress of the work simulation makes solving the puzzles feel more satisfying, because you’re doing it on a time limit. It’s good fun.
Stamping Out Problems
The other half of Letter Lost‘s puzzles come in the form of the people at the window. They’ll chat with you, giving you vague hints about the world, then usually ask you to post something. Occasionally, however, they’ll ask you to do something specific. This may be opening set letters, or posting to a specific place. Like the woman that asks you to post a letter to a graveyard, in order to resurrect their husband. These were some of my favourite puzzles, as they quite offered required out-of-the-box thinking. You’ve got until the week ends to figure it out, as the loop will cancel your progress. The solutions change what happens to the characters, too, and they might live or die depending on your choices. I thought the blend of environment puzzles and dialogue puzzles worked very well.
In fact, the only weak pillar of the three might be the horror. It’s swinging for cosmic horror, but I feel like it’s a bit thin on the ground. The influence of a Lovecraftian monstrosity should have us questioning what’s real and what isn’t. But outside of the rules, nothing really changes in Letter Lost. I started the game with the same routine I finished on. What’s more, it’s poor at showing you the outcome of your bad choices. Normally I’d either die, which has no real impact as we pop straight back to life, or I’d get a brief text description. Sometimes Liv shouts at us on the phone. Don’t get me wrong, I like the choices but I was too often left with a feeling of ‘was that it’?
That might also be down to how broken Letter Lost feels at the moment, both on a moment-to-moment basis and in the wider scheme of things. I was constantly running into bugs. At one point, I lost the ability to open letters, so I couldn’t end the day. I was almost constantly getting told off, despite clearly following the rules. On a wider scale, events kept repeating themselves and weeks would end suddenly with no explanations. It made it hard to tell whether I was really progressing, or if the whole game was just breaking apart. Then there’s just a generally rough feel to things. There are no subtitle options, for instance. I’ve also seen quite a few reports of people getting motion sickness. Maybe keep a bucket nearby.
Letter Lost – Wonky Yet Intriguing
Despite all this roughness though, I came out of Letter Lost feeling satisfied. There were enough puzzles to keep me interested, and the post office mechanics were engaging enough that I didn’t mind grinding them out. It could be more punishing, though. I accidentally left it unpaused for about twenty minutes, for instance, and was perfectly fine. Either way, the variety of puzzles and the way new story beats unfolded was enough to keep me interested. In each loop, I usually had or two things I wanted to explore and that’s what you need in a game like this.
I still don’t know what happens if you keep watering the plant. Even right up to the end, there were plenty of unanswered questions. I guess that’s a tick in the replayability box. That’s what kept me engaged the most, I think. Through all the roughness around the edges, the constant slow drip of puzzles, paired with questions about the story, kept me getting out of bed each morning. It is a niche game, a sort of Papers, Please and Blue Prince romance story, but it’s a niche I enjoy. If it’s a favourite of yours, then you’ll find Letter Lost to be an engaging experience, with a dash of cosmic horror, even if it does fall apart now and then.
