Out of Words
Out of Words is a platform adventure made for exactly two players. Each one takes Kurt or Karla, two friends who fall into the fantasy realm of Vokabulantis and find their mouths gone, which leaves every jump, catch and puzzle to be settled between the people holding the controllers. Release is planned for early 2027 on PC through the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2.
Top 3 Reasons to Play
- The heroes cannot speak, so the talking falls to the two people playing. Director Johan Oettinger says that is deliberate: the coordination lives in the room.
- The world was assembled from real materials. Grass is cut from paper, the surface of the water is a scanned gelatine texture, and a small batch of miniature books was fabricated, scanned and reused as modular pieces for the bookshelf-lined market and the piles of books that block off whole areas.Getting started takes little experience.
- Preview coverage points to simple platforming at the start and mechanics a non-gamer can follow, and the developers frame the game around cooperation. Hideo Kojima, after trying it at Summer Game Fest 2025, called it "simple, gentle, and beautiful."
Story and Lore
A short opening chapter shows Kurt and Karla as best friends who can tell each other anything. It ends at a moment when the pair could say something new, confidence collapses, and both drop into Vokabulantis in a fall that Oettinger likens to Alice's tumble into Wonderland. Their mouths disappear on arrival.
Early on, the story widens into a sprawling fantasy world with a cast of its own. The promised way home runs through Mr. Speaker, who is supposed to give the friends their mouths back. By the time they reach him he is not in his right mind and is oppressing the whole world, which turns the errand into a rebellion. Fighting back means travelling to a mythical lake beneath the city for primordial clay, and what comes out of it is not the divine creature they expected: the demo hands both players a lumbering clay golem instead. Clay also has a place in the story's literary background. Oettinger points out that Gilgamesh, among the earliest written works, was set down on clay tablets.
The official pitch leaves the price of saving Vokabulantis unanswered, and the friendship is part of what is being wagered. Vokabulantis was also the game's original title.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Early stretches are plain platforming: running, jumping, swimming, wading through puddles, even hitching a ride on a giant ball a dung beetle is rolling toward a rotting log. Specific mechanics arrive later, and each chapter is organised around one idea meant to mirror where the friends stand as characters. The team prototyped about 100 mechanics and kept roughly a tenth.
- Gravity toss: whoever holds Aleph falls upward, and throwing it to the partner swaps who is on the ceiling. A jump into a gap only works if the partner is ready to send Aleph back at the right moment, and a late throw leaves the other player falling. Every toss lands with a splash, since Aleph is a water creature.
- Shared golem: in the Summer Game Fest demo both players move a clay golem together, each controlling one hand that reaches out to grab scenery and drag the body forward during a chase after one of Mr. Speaker's servants.
- Physics-driven puzzles and stunts fill out the campaign, and because one player's input can send the other into a fall, a panicked button press is a genuine hazard.
On format, preview coverage draws its closest line to It Takes Two, another adventure that cannot be played alone. Oettinger names INSIDE as a favourite game, and cites the 1996 stop-motion point-and-click The Neverhood as the title that made him want to build one of his own. Everything above comes from preview builds shown at Summer Game Fest in 2025 and 2026 and may change before release.
Characters and Factions
No formal factions have been announced; the cast revealed so far is small and personal.
- Kurt and Karla: the two playable friends, modelled as detailed maquettes. Oettinger wanted players to feel them as equals.
- Aleph: a light-blue flying creature that resembles a feathered stingray and embodies the bond between the two friends.
- Prince of Many Colors: flamboyant, and still growing into his prestige. He teases the pair like an older brother and takes it upon himself to give them new names.
- Moon: a powerful little girl who crashed down from the sky.
Mr. Speaker stands at the opposite end of the cast, first sought out as a guide and later exposed as the figure oppressing the realm. His servants are a livelier bunch: one, met during the golem chase, sings about how much he loves his job until the clay body bursts through a wall and he bolts.
Editions
A single standard edition, the base game, is the only version on the Epic Games Store. No deluxe tiers, DLC or season pass have been announced next to it.