kind words
I have about 254 playtime hours in a game called “Kind Words”. I bought it in Summer 2020 and for over a year, spent every evening online, with a warm matcha latte, reading and responding. It’s a game about anonymously putting up requests and answering them.
People have different motivations; some want recommendations, some ask you what you do or parts of your routine to get inspired, some need help with specific problems… or are just sad and need some uplifting words. You see the request in a little stack and you can cycle through them. When you reply, you have a limited amount of characters and can put a little sticker on the bottom right. When the person appreciates your response, they can send a sticker back. That’s how you slowly collect more and more different stickers. With these, you can also decorate the room your little character is writing in. In between reading or writing, you can catch little paper planes flying around where people have written nice things. All while there’s relaxing lofi music in the background.
The concept works surprisingly well; due to anonymity, limited space and just having that one exchange, things stay much more civil. The report system is sound, and messages can get filtered or flagged, people are encouraged not to share usernames.
It was relaxing for me to do this in a time of uncertainty, lockdowns and isolation. It was my little evening ritual. It usually takes me less than 5 minutes to respond. If we subtract hours spent idle, writing my own requests, reading things or searching through the stack, I think I am close to having written almost 3.000 responses to people in KW1 alone.
I also have their newest game, Kind Words 2, and I am racking up some hours now there as well - 17h by now. Hardship usually made me jaded and I found kindness very hard, but after this year surprisingly I didn’t emerge jaded, but kindness seems a bit easier than before. Kind Words 2 is backwards compatible and Kind Words 1 is, I guess, forwards compatible (?). The requests stack comes from both games, KW2 just has additional features and places to visit outside of the trusted old room. There you can send off more specific types of messages and requests, and even a void to get things off your chest, and a sky full of stars to cast your wishes.
I love both games and around this time of the year especially. It can be dark, cold, lonely, stressful, but opening Kind Words and receiving and giving some encouragement can be a fun little ritual to get you through it.
I also have a fun story to tell: My favorite sticker is the Axolotl one. I was searching for a screenshot of it, but couldn’t find one. I wasn’t at home to start the game and grab one myself, so I chose to tune into a recorded Twitch stream of the game to hopefully see the sticker selection screen and screenshot it. I skipped through the stream and suddenly saw the person answering one of my requests on stream! What a coincidence. I messaged the streamer about it and we both thought it was amazing.
I’m looking forward to many more hours on Kind Words 2 :) Maybe we will meet there anonymously! When someone signed A is sending an axolotl sticker, maybe it’s me…
If you like explorations about kindness in games, you might also like my post on finding kindness in Palia.
Published 11 Dec, 2024