A Normal Lost Phone

A nice detective game that's quick to 100% too! It's very, very easy, the gameplay consists of reading messages and emails to find clues for the few puzzles there are. The music is fantastic, and the story (through messages, etc.) is well written. I recommend it!

A Normal Lost Phone is a short, sweet game about an abandoned phone and the mysteries it reveals about its previous owner. The game just drops you into this scenario, and you get to poke around the phone and click through random things as if you'd really found it irl. The puzzles are fun, and exploring the different apps makes for a neat little interactive experience. The story it tells is well-conveyed and heartfelt, and I love the educational elements about queer identities and issues. This was a cute and meaningful adventure that's easy to play through in a single sitting and has great queer diversity and representation. For its price point, it's definitely worth playing.

very heartfelt game. now that our lives are basically inseparable from our phones and most of our lives are in there, while playing this game, you realize that you really do know a lot about the character - the way she isn't able to text people back, even those close to her, the way she writes about her life experiences and tries to find herself, all of it just really feels very familiar. while sending her a message about going through her phone feels a little too much, deleting the data and letting her know about it is a beautiful way to honor her starting a new life and wish her luck, knowing she's free and will never look back

This game is lovely. It really hits home and accurately portrays real life for queer people. It has so much content and is such a fun puzzle, slowly uncovering the secrets and truths of this person's life. I enjoyed every second of playing and it's definitely worth the money and worth playing. I finished it the day I started because it was just so captivating. The music is also lovely and really applicable to the game, and really adds to the atmosphere. I even added the music to my personal playlist. I really enjoyed the game and would certainly recommend it.

good game, nice story and a few simple puzzles. very good ending imo

This is a nice, short game that deals with uncovering secrets and grappling with one's identity. There's not much to it, though, so I don't think I'll have much of a reason to come back to this game. Also, the music gets a bit repetitive, and some of the dialog seems a bit stiff, almost like an instruction manual for someone who's never delved into any LGBTQ terminology. But that's probably very helpful to someone, and I think this game is still an overall good experience for the low price.

A short game, but one I really enjoyed. I think the premise is really good, but I can't really divulge without spoilers.

It's a short journey, but one that richly rewards for its cost.

I got the game for 83 cents during Steam Summer Sale, but now that I have played it i'd say the normal price is completely justified. The game has a uniqe way of story telling, a fitting soundtrack and a compelling story. All in all I'd definitely recommend.

Beautiful and original story. Short but great game!

[h1]Wall of cliche Text[/h1] The single biggest reason I don’t recommend this game is that [b]it’s[/b] for the most part [b]just many walls of text[/b]. The amount of text (especially relative to the amount of puzzles) in this game is insane. On multiple occasions you need to extract key info from one of these “walls”. Because of the amount of text it took me 3.6 hours to complete the game and I have no idea how others do it in less than 2 or even 1 hour. I guess, I might be overly perfectionistic playing games and some text could be skipped, but then you miss part of the narrative, which is supposed to be the main part of the game. [h2]Lame “gameplay”[/h2] Progression=puzzles of this game are incredibly basic: find a key piece of info in the text walls and use it as a password in some other phone app. Most of the time this password is a date, but not a specific date, just an “important date”, so you need to bruteforce numerous possibilities. Despite reading through every single text and skimming through texts once more, I wasn’t able to identify one of the dates as important to try as a password and needed to consult a walkthrough (which is a total shame for a game of such a short length and shallow depth). To quote said walkthrough: [quote]… but I’m not sure why that date would be the password. I mean, it makes sense in hindsight, but it seems like a stretch to expect the player to know this is the password. Still, that’s it. [/quote] [h2]Story[/h2] is super cliche. If you saw the game’s tags on Steam store page (as I did, or alternatively you read some reviews) and heard about the game’s topic, then you likely already know most of the overall plot before even opening the game - that’s how basic it is. It’s presentation is also cliche. [h2]Agendas[/h2] I don’t mean the main topic of the game - I think any game is free to try to make some point. I refer to the fact that it also contains at least two other agendas ([spoiler]“eat less meat”[/spoiler] and [spoiler]“intimacy needs explicit consent”[/spoiler]), which have nothing to do with the main plot and are furthermore presented in the most cliche way possible. I don’t critique the specific agendas, but the fact that there are [i]too many[/i] agendas all dumped in such a short game. [h2]Lazy[/h2] in various aspects. The game doesn’t even try hard to be solid experience: [list] [*]Wi-Fi password is this game’s typical “key info piece” and is shorter than 8 characters (which is not allowed in real life) [*]For so many walls of text, there is not even a search functionality [*]Calculator misses some clicks [*]Ending is (in line with the rest of the game) very basic [/list] [h2]Overall[/h2] Biggest critique is still that this game is a wall of text. Only play this game if you like to read a lot. In which case, you should probably read something interesting. So, don’t play this game:)

This is a short (1-2hr) investigative game where you poke at someone's phone to find out what happened to them. There's a lot of reading of text messages, emails, message board posts etc. so it's for the most part an interactive fiction experience, but it does have some puzzles too. The story has queer topics, and it's structured a bit like that's a plot reveal, except the game tells you when you start it up that it will include discussions of anti-queer bigotry. So I think it's safe to say that this wasn't intended as a spoiler. (I won't get into exactly which queer topics, because that might be a spoiler, on the other hand.) The game has also been recently included in the 2025 Pride Humble Bundle, though that's not where I got it. I both liked A Normal Lost Phone, but also felt like I wasn't necessarily the target audience as a queer person who has been out for a very long time. A lot of the discussion is very very intro-level, which makes sense for the young protagonist, but I also felt like I knew about all this and did not need a lengthy explainer. I wished the dialog was a bit punchier, some of it was somewhat bland. I think for someone who doesn't know a lot about queer topics, this would actually be an approachable and empathetic introduction; so I'm glad that something like this exists, because I do get asked for intro-type queer media recs for teens a lot. I also liked the community aspect of the plot and how different communities were shown. I was a bit uneasy about the concept of snooping around someone's phone - this is kind of rooted in my own experience where the American authorities went through my phone at a border crossing (many years ago, this was not recent) so I would rather not reenact that with me doing the going through someone else's phone. But the fact that you are a stranger going through someone's phone is discussed a bit in-game, so it doesn't remain unreflected - that was good enough for me. I thought the puzzles were all quite organically incorporated into the story - I had one small annoyance, some of the puzzles depend on dates and the game is a bit inconsistent about date formats. The music was really intriguing and a *lot* more elaborate than I'd expected! You can also unlock some music, and to me this added a lot to my experience. I played on the Steam Deck and it ran well - I did have the Deck docked to my TV, so I don't know how it would work on the smaller built-in screen. Overall, this was a quite solid game, if not exactly what I'd been looking for. I already bought the sequel Another Lost Phone: Laura's Story, but I think I won't play it right away, because I like to vary the types of games I play; I'll probably get to it relatively soon though. _________ Source of the game: Bought with my own money in a Steam sale (not the current summer sale)

A little GEM for nosy people like me! 10/10 enjoyed this game a lot <3

terrible game even for its price, it leads you on into thinking its one thing when its another, picked it up to veg out and look at something mindlessly, ended up absolutely despising it with a passion. if you take this review as anti gay you'd be wrong. its anti tr00n. no one ever asked to associate with them gays and tr00ns are two separate worlds, and i was baited and switched. G A R B A G E

Good, short, sweet

NO

:)

!