Publisher: Kwalee
Developer: SonderingEmily
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Price: $11.99
I'm going to say this upfront: if you have even a minor psychological horror bone in your body, then click away from this review and go play Lily's World XD (hereafter just referred to as Lily's World). You're going to like it.
If you're not sure that particular skeletal aspect applies to you, take a short, short walk with me.
You are Stephen - a modern-day man who stumbles across an old laptop while dumpster-diving. Upon booting it up, what you discover is an untarnished time capsule. The laptop belonged to a 16 year-old girl named Lily back in 2004, and all of her notes, emails, bookmarked web pages, etc, are still available. As you start looking for clues to see about possibly returning this laptop to its old owner, however, some uncomfortable truths start coming to light. Namely that 2004 was the last time anyone saw her.
What follows is a rollercoaster of plot twists, red herrings, and the kind of rawness that makes the story's semi-autobiographical nature unsurprising. It isn't the kind of story that's going to keep you crying throughout. But it is the kind of story that's going to make you smile and laugh, revel in nostalgia, wallow in dread, sit slack-jawed at the real-world immersion SonderingEmily pulls off, and most crucially, weep at the sheer unfairness kids are subjected to.
I do have to point out that, despite that excellent (if I do say so myself) sales pitch, there are some flaws with this story.
The most prevalent one is also one that I feel a little bad about pointing out. This is a semi-autobiographical story for SonderingEmily, and the subject matter is clearly important to her. But perhaps as a result, there are brief moments where the writing feels rehearsed. Like it's no longer an in-universe character writing something, but SonderingEmily as she exists today waxing philosophical on these ideas. It's a rare problem (only 2 examples come to mind). But it's a problem that sticks out given how frequently she gets some of these same points across in shockingly well-written ways. The biggest tear-jerking moment for me was so affecting primarily because of her writing in that moment. And if you don't believe me, I've tried writing a closing statement for this point like 10 different times. Every single time, I caught myself tip-toeing around and trying to phrase things gently as if I were actually giving this feedback to a teenager. So, to get back on track, some brief weak points in the writing are this game's biggest flaw.
There's also just a little bit too much that goes unexplained. Nothing crucial to understanding the plot, and nothing that would constitute a plot hole, but I did have some pretty big questions with no answers when the credits rolled. Does a horror game really need to have answers for some of what happens? I suppose not. But when it's as realistic a horror game as this one, adhering to that philosophy can have adverse effects.
If I had to levy one complaint at the gameplay loop, however, it would be that it gets a lot more "guided" as the plot progresses.
For reasons that would constitute spoilers, you have a near constant companion who begins to tell you what you're looking for next. This guidance gets more and more specific as time goes on. It's the kind of thing that can largely be ignored, but you do have to continually report on your progress. At which point you'll get your next clue on what to look for next.
If you've already found the relevant information, you can just go ahead and report on that...but that's not always going to be the case, as this helper is sometimes the one who supplies crucial documents you can't get otherwise. Eventually, they become the dealer for something like 80% of the resources you need in the exact order you need them. It's still up to you to do the investigative legwork and compare across documents you received earlier...and the story wouldn't be remotely the same without your companion. But they also serve as a hint system if you ask them for it, so I wish they could've somehow only given you guidance under those circumstances. Perhaps there could be some shoehorned reason to have Lily already have some of these things, I don't know.
Lastly on this topic, I'm going to suggest something. When the helper asks "do you have a personal email/phone you can use?", take them literally. And that's all I'll say on that.
Youtuber LilyPichu (fittingly) voices Lily as well as a couple other members of the principle cast, and she has a fairly large following. So despite this game's nonexistent marketing, it's actually more than possible that you're familiar with it already!
In that case, you may already have watched someone play it. Even so, I'd recommend spending the money even if for no reason other than to support this developer.
And if this is the first you're hearing of it, I'll give you the same advice.
Lily's World tells a compelling narrative, has you interface with that narrative through equally compelling logic puzzles, serves as a near-flawless nostalgic time capsule, and shines a light on an epidemic that has tortured children for at least as long as the internet has been around. And for my money, it's one of this year's most well-deserved success stories.
With this being a smaller-scale game, I'm going to be using the smaller-scale scoring system (say that five times fast).
Let us review:
Rare flawed writing and a few unanswered questions - 0.5
Slightly too much guidance - 0.5
The final score for Lily's World XD is...
9.0/10 - Fantastic
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