We were very positive about This Bed We Made and gave the game an 8.5/10. We especially loved the story: the game pulled you in quickly and the mystery stayed interesting to follow. We also saw the different choices and endings as big plus points. The biggest downside was that the game was not all that challenging. Because of that, we did not feel much need to play through it again to discover the other endings. Overall, we thought it was a strong, immersive mystery game with a great story, but limited challenge and replayability. That gives me pretty high expectations for the new game: Lost & Found. It is always difficult to satisfy your players again when you have already delivered a strong base game and your standalone experience has to be just as good, or even better. So today’s question is: has Lowbirth Games pulled it off, or have they messed it up?
A new mystery
I am not going to tell you the story of the base game. You can read that HERE. The standalone experience takes place a few years after This Bed We Made, in 1964. Once again, you play as Sophie Roy, but she no longer works at the Clarington Hotel: she is now a flight attendant aboard the transatlantic Orpheus. During her work, personal belongings of passengers and crew start going missing, and Sophie naturally starts snooping around again to figure out what is going on.
Gameplay, choices and puzzles
Once again, you can clean rooms, make beds, inspect items, have conversations, find clues and snoop through other people’s private belongings. This time, though, it all feels a bit more compact and smaller in scale. One thing worth knowing is that it is a side story that takes around 1-2 hours to finish. What I personally find such a shame is that the game feels so good again that those two hours quickly feel like 30 minutes. I finished the game and was still hungry for more. I had barely finished my starter and my stomach was already demanding the main course. I just wanted more gameplay! You do not need to have This Bed We Made installed or even own it, although the developer does recommend playing the original first. And really, what are we talking about here? The standalone experience is only 7 euros. A cup of coffee in Amsterdam costs more these days.
I like that you can carry over your choices from This Bed We Made, because they genuinely affect the story of the new standalone experience. But after all this time, I honestly could not remember which choices I had made back then. I would have liked to see some kind of auto-select feature here, where the game looks at your achievements or certain save data. Instead, I had to compare everything with the achievements I had unlocked and just hope I got it right. Another thing I found disappointing is that the puzzles were a little too easy. And my thoughts of: “this could be an achievement” turned out to be right a little too often as well. After my first run, I already had 71% of the achievements. The choices are also less impactful than in the base game. That said, some choices can still have negative consequences.
Sophie is still Sophie
The atmosphere is fantastic once again. It all feels so good and believable that I am almost jealous I do not get to live in this world myself. I felt that even more strongly in this game than in the base game. And Sophie is still Sophie. At first, I was worried they might not be able to carry over that same feeling you got from Sophie into the standalone experience, but they absolutely pulled it off. Something else I thought was really cool is that, at the end, I actually got to see the consequences of a choice I had made earlier. You could see that certain people had actually ended up together, and my advice had been: go look her up sometime. The moment Sophie sees this, you genuinely feel what Sophie is feeling, and it gave me a lump in my throat. And are they seriously hinting at another new game at the end?
Conclusion
So, has Lowbirth Games pulled it off? As far as I am concerned, yes. Lost & Found brings back exactly that feeling that made me enjoy This Bed We Made so much. The atmosphere is fantastic, Sophie still feels like Sophie, and I was completely back in this world in no time. The biggest problem is actually that I just wanted more. The standalone DLC is short, the puzzles could have been more challenging, and the choices feel less impactful than in the base game. But for around 7 euros, you get a really fun extra dose of This Bed We Made. The starter was delicious, but now I want the main course.
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