Make digital pen pals in chill out game Kind Words

Share your worries and concerns and receive comforting letters from anonymous strangers.

Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to) is a game about writing down your worries and concerns and receiving digital letters online from people offering supportive words. From your desk in a comfy room, you write down your problems and respond to others all to the backdrop of some lo-fi beats in a bid to chill out.

It’s often suggested that writing things down and putting them out there can help you come to terms with situations you’re struggling with, so Kind Words sounds like a great game in concept. It’ll be interesting to see how they deal with moderation and curation in regard to what people can say in the letters and who can contact you. The last thing you need if you’re trying to chill out is random abuse from strangers.

Still, it’s a very wholesome idea to consider for a game and, hopefully, players embrace what it’s all about – collecting stickers and relaxing to chill beats whilst supporting others with the issues they struggle with. The game does give some direction in this suggesting that Kind Words is a place to “use your words to lift others and be lifted in return,” by responding to requests with letters of “comfort, sympathy or gentle advice.”

It’s the ‘gentle advice’ section of that paragraph that particularly scares me though, as often advice is not the thing you’re looking for when sharing worries and concerns. As you respond more you slowly build up a sticker collection that you can share with others by attaching them to your letters. You can also unlock some room decorations as well, to help settle your character more into the chilled out environment.

It seems like a game whose heart is in the right place. I’d be interested to see how it actually works once let loose into the wilds of the internet.

Kind Words is available as part of Humble Monthly this month, and releases on Steam in September this year.