Lost And Found: A This Bed We Made Story Review
In 2023, Lowbirth Games introduced the inquisitive hotel housekeeper Sophie Roy in This Bed We Made - a neo-noir third-person mystery game. It allowed players to inhabit the role of a nosey housekeeper who became entangled in a tale of love and murder. With a strong focus on era prejudices and choice and consequence, it is one of the more memorable narrative experiences in recent years.
Now, Sophie returns in Lost & Found: A This Bed We Made Story - a short story that is set after the events of the original game. Where This Bed We Made was 3 to 5 hours long, Lost & Found is a bite-sized short story that lasts between 1 and 2 hours.
After the multiple possible conclusions in This Bed We Made, Lost & Found begins by allowing players to select which narrative choices they made: from romantic partners, to the consequences of the investigation. While these choices give Lost & Found some replayability, it offers a strong through line to further develop each person's connection to Sophie as a character.
Some time after the events at the Clarington Hotel, Sophie is now employed as a Stewardess aboard the cruise ship, Orpheus. After being introduced to her boss, Lowbirth Games takes a beat inside the staff break room to introduce new and returning players to the gameplay mechanics. Sophie is able to interact with objects like posters, documents, open lockers and various items to find and expand on Sophie's background, flesh out other characters, and fill-in the story between the two games.
Back up to speed with how the basics work, Sophie goes to start her shift, but is stopped by her boss and colleague. Once again, trouble is afoot as someone on board has been stealing from both passengers and staff. Now, Sophie volunteers to do what she does best: snoop around people's rooms and complete her housekeeping duties, whilst using her intuition to untangle another intriguing mystery.
Image: Lost & Found: A This Bed We Made Story - Sophie Roy
The bulk of the game takes place in the passengers' quarters, where you begin your daily routine of cleaning the halls and cabins. You do things like tidying cushions, cleaning ashtrays, collecting cups and glasses, returning trays, scrubbing dirty carpets, making beds and more. Immersive activities that make exploring the cabins for clues as to who the thief is a tactile experience. Leading Sophie to discover the purpose of each passenger's trip, their hobbies, love interests, traumas, and family history.
The cluttered and messy rooms contain many interactive objects to make these environments feel lived in. If you look hard enough, there's always more to find than you'd first expect. Sometimes people hide secrets that require keys or passwords, and it's up to you to decide whether to return everything you've moved to its original place so people are none the wiser of your investigation.
Sophie is also tasked with delivering telegrams. Everything is another layer of information to help piece the mystery together. Something as innocuous as a thrown out letter can hold key details to connect people and events. But like the original game, Lost & Found trusts players to reread documents and item descriptions in the menu when making your deductions. Skilfully written documents, item descriptions and Sophie's internal thoughts help to establish unique character voices. Adding character motives and stakes to the story.
Image: Lost & Found: A This Bed We Made Story - Photograph
Much like This Bed We Made, Lowbirth Games continues it's use of talented voice actors to coalesce with their excellent writing to realise authentic and believable characters, all going through their own plausible life events. Some simply want to escape; others live in denial. A believability that adds power to how nuanced Lowbirth Games' writers have employed themes of family trauma, illness, grief and prejudices.
Beyond Sophie's chores which present as mini games, like rotating a stick to clean, she also encounters a few small scale puzzles. Deductions where you read documents to connect items to particular people, or hunt for a password. But there's also a few hands-on puzzles, such as piecing together a torn up letter, and remembering a hot drink order. Little gameplay mechanics that add a lot to the narrative experience and immersion.
All of which is fully realised in nicely detailed environments that are covered with story grounding features like examinable magazines, posters, personal mementoes and so much more. As intended, every room feels inhabited by a different person. Lowbirth Games really know how to create high fidelity, detailed living quarters. It plays a huge part in the immersion. As does the facial animations. Although it doesn't match the fidelity of a AAA title, the semi-realistic art style is well done during dialogue sequences.
Image: Lost & Found: A This Bed We Made Story - Dialogue
Everything serves the narrative from gameplay, visuals, voice acting and atmospheric sound. But that doesn't mean Lost & Found is a faultless experience, as I did encounter a few minor visual glitches. But these didn't spoil my time with the game.
Lost & Found: A This Bed We Made Story is another compelling Sophie Roy mystery. Lowbirth Games haven't changed the formula that made This Bed We Made work, it's simply more of the same - a polished and heartfelt standalone short story that's worth the time of any fan of narrative mystery games. I hope Lost & Found gains the developers many more fans of Sophie Roy, as it's a unique series that deserves attention. But whether Lowbirth Games chooses to create other shorter Sophie Roy mysteries, work on a new full-length game in the series, or take what they've learned into a brand new project, I'll be anticipating solving their next mystery.
*Review Code Provided By Publisher
