Buy The Word is Not the Thing PC key

The Word is Not the Thing is an experimental game about observing your emotional connection to words. You explore its world and interact with the environment, paintings and characters as a story unfolds over three days. Words and your feelings about them shape how you play, as you examine whether you use words to escape from feelings.

The story and its settings

The story moves through five locations: the home, the commute, the office, nature and the self. The game draws on the work of 20th-century philosopher J. Krishnamurti, whose subjects included psychological revolution, the nature of the mind, meditation, inquiry and human relationships.

Words and feelings

You find, discover and remove words, and face your core fear. Words become harder to deal with depending on your emotional connection to each one. The game explores separating a word from the feeling it names—not rejecting or suppressing the word, but noticing its effect and seeing whether you use it to escape from direct perception of the feeling.

Style and length

The world is minimalistic and black and white, with emotions expressed through words. An emotional, dark synthwave-inspired soundtrack accompanies a story designed to be completed in one session, taking 45 to 60 minutes.