Back in the spring of 2020, the games industry was rather hungry for something feel-good (you know why), so it was the perfect time for a cozy multiplayer game like Kind Words to go viral. Popcannibal’s indie title had actually been around for a few years already, but it took off during COVID, appealing to gamers for its bizarre but uplifting gameplay hook: It was literally a social sandbox where you hung out in your room, listened to music, and replied to notes of love and fear from other players of the game.
It sounded benign at the time, but our own Not So Massively columnist Tyler engaged with the game and the community and deemed it surprisingly intense – “survival through a thousand bandages,” he said, playing on the idiom “death by a thousand paper cuts.” Apparently, players sent over 5M letters over the lifetime of the game so far, and now, Popcannibal is working on a sequel.
Dubbed Kind Words 2, the new game is clearly based on the same concepts but expands the world dramatically in that… there is a world, not just a room. It looks a bit like a lo-fi Sims sandbox, in which players customize their characters, move around cities and interiors, chat in real time, and then get back to making other players feel good via notes. Oh, and it’s also backward-compatible:
“Kind Words 2 includes a re-made version of the original Kind Words. Every room has been polished and the UI has been redone for much greater accessibility. If you played Kind Words, all your old letters and favorites are waiting for you in Kind Words 2. It all runs on one big, happy server. Swap letters and stickers with players of either game!”
There’s no official launch date just yet, but you can already sign up for playtesting through Steam.
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