Game EXP: lily's world XD (PC)

lily's world XD
Systems: Windows
Release Date: September 17, 2026
Publisher: Kwalee
Developer: SonderingEmily
Time Spent: 5 Hours

Maybe it's a cop-out as someone who plays video games and attempts to write reasonably well-thought-out reviews, but it's one of those games that the less that's known about the finer points of the story, the better.

lily's world XD is in the genre of "found device" games where you play as a person who's found a laptop straight out of the early-mid 2000s.  After logging into the computer, you have access to a handful of files and a Netscape-era web browser complete with access to MySpace-era social media pages and LiveJournal-type blogs of introspection.  The sound of the mouse clicks and even the animated mouse icon are all straight out of the early to mid-2000s.  There is a choice to have an optional ambient audio track in the background, and while I did try turning it off to maintain the immersion, I found that it actually accentuated the "feeling" of playing in the world created by SonderingEmily.

Like other "found device" games, lily's world XD is full of puzzles to access different parts of the laptop, unlocking private folders, and accessing online accounts that have been dormant for the last 20 years.  There is a compelling narrative mystery as new areas of the laptop are uncovered and communications with long-silent accounts are rekindled.

The game is broken up into several gameplay loops.  You solve puzzles, gather information through conversations, and discover other details on your own.  Using information that's given to you and that you read about on your own is what gives you the answers to the puzzles.  And repeat.

 You are presented with a handful of puzzles to solve, such as figuring out a password or where ot use a login ID from only a handful of available websites, where you end up finding a new website through a hyperlink on another website.  Then there are information/context/exposition dumps you receive from the laptop owner's friend Iris, who is your primary messenger contact.  Then it's rinse and repeat, but not in a bad way.  Several of the puzzles actually reminded me a lot of playing an escape room with Conklederp, Himo, and Folly (friends from college who we've been doing escape rooms with for the last 10 years), if we were all working to unlock different parts of a single laptop.

That's all I'm going to say about this amazing game (except for the P.S., but that's optional).  If you like 'found device' games and/or escape room-style puzzles and have a nostalgic view of early-mid 2000s computer aesthetic, I can't recommend lily's world XD enough.

~JWfW/JDub/TheFaceplantman/Jaconian

Katkeruuden liekin polttama?

P.S.  The quick and easy explanation for why I don't have a lot of images up for the game is that I inadvertently had the Notes app open on the in-game desktop, which contained a lot of the answers to passwords, email addresses, and other bits of information that I took down while playing.  Most of the pictures would then include a mass of censored lines to prevent spoilers.  I guess that's one of the biggest issues with not thinking ahead while taking screenshots during the game.  And so I decided to only include a few screenshots, ones that give off more of a vibe that the SonderingEmily was creating with the UI, and not include a bunch of screenshots with information blacked out.

P.P.S.  Below are spoilers of sorts, so proceed with caution.

There were several instances where the game messed with me in a way that can best be described as Eternal Darkness-esque and fourth-wall-breaking.  How that manifested (I'll link here if you're interested, but I won't include it in the article to avoid spoilers) was in ways more personalized than I've ever experienced in a video game.  More often than not, I was more excited by the creepy things happening than genuinely scared.  

There was also one instance where my webcam was accessed, but because I had the shutter closed, I didn't realize what was going on until after the scene was over.  There was a later moment in the game where the webcam footage was called back up, but because it had originally been closed, there was just a grey placeholder image, which was a little disappointing.