A Lost Note

Genre: Walking Simulator / 3D Platformer

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: 404 Games

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Review:

A Lost Note is a Walking Simulator with some light 3D Platformer elements released on PC in 2023 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024. This game has players controlling a cat wandering through various areas collecting dark gray pages while a text-to-speech voice yammers on about a lost relationship.

In all the years I’ve been playing and reviewing videogames, I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered a game that struck me as so pretentious. I’ve sat through an hour-long lecture about memes in Metal Gear Solid 2, unlocked long, boring videos about random stuff that has nothing to do with the gameplay in The Witness, and reviewed countless “art house” games like Paratopic and Fatum Betula, and yet none of that gave me the overwhelming feeling that the game’s creator was full of themselves like I did in A Lost Note.

You inexplicably control a black cat, which doesn’t seem to have any connection to the story or themes of the game, and within seconds you’re led to a room where a beeping heart monitor flatlines, only to find yourself whisked away to a vast forested mountainous region where you’re expected to collect dark grey pages as a computer-generated voice reminisces about memories of a relationship. And I just can’t help thinking… why?

Why a cat? Why a wide open space with almost nothing in it? Why collect pages? Why does this game assign “run” and “jump” to the ZL and ZR buttons when the other buttons apparently do nothing? Why is even the “run” speed abysmally slow? Why is there a jump button when there’s not really any reason to use it? Why should I care about this relationship the narrator is babbling on about? Why, if the game’s creator cares, did they not bother to get a voice actor or even record the voice-over themselves instead of having an emotionless machine read it?

Devoid of any sensible explanations for any of this, what we’re presented with is a game with absolutely atrocious pacing, terrible level design with large, repetitive levels that have almost nothing to do but still require you to look around to find the dumb pages, a terrible camera, poor game physics that have you catching on scenery, extremely repetitive poorly-synthesized somber music, and absurd load times.

And finally, let’s talk about the graphics. That image at the top of the page? That’s not what this game looks like, at least not on Nintendo Switch, which features 3D environments that are far less-detailed, with the same patch of grass copy-pasted so infrequently it just looks tacky, none of the nice lighting that screenshot implies, nor the nice-looking foliage. Perhaps the PC version looks like this, but the Nintendo Switch version absolutely does not. It looks like this:

Ugh… woof, right? Or… meow, I guess?

All of that is not to say the PC version of A Lost Note is better, as it is priced at an absolutely laughable $25. The Nintendo Switch version’s $10 is somewhat more reasonable. However, to anyone reading this I would suggest that the ideal price for this game should be $0, as it is an absolutely miserable experience that wants to think that it is the most profound, beautiful thing ever. It isn’t.

tl;dr – A Lost Note is a Walking Simulator with 3D Platformer elements that has players controlling a cat moving through large, empty environments collecting notes while a narrator reminisces. This game is painfully dull, offensively pretentious, and the images and video on the eShop page are not an accurate representation of the ugly visuals the Nintendo Switch version of this game has in reality. Do not buy this self-important scam of a game.

Grade: D-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Worst Monetization / Scam

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