Kong Orange has always been a studio with an interest in the arts and genre-bending interactive experiences. Its first game Heartbeats was a mobile puzzler, visual novel and a Spotify playlist creator. 2019's Felix the Reaper was a collaboration between the studio and several different musicians and dancers. It's not really a surprise then that Out of Words, revealed at Summer Games Fest 2025, combines co-op gameplay with handmade animation and poetry.
Out of Words is actually the idea of Johan Oettinger, founder of animation studio WiredFly, and poet Morten Søndergaard. Oettinger is a filmmaker and much more besides, but he isn't an expert on games, which is why he asked Kong Orange for help all the way back in 2015. As a child, Oettinger became a big fan of stop motion in games, thanks to Neverhood Inc's stop-motion point-and-click adventure, The Neverhood. After having secured money for a stop-motion short film, Oettinger and Søndergaard initially wanted to make both the film as well as a short game but decided to "fully assimilate it into the game" instead.
