Review | Wilmot Works It Out - Puzzles And A Postie
You answer the door. It’s the friendly post person Sam with a parcel – the latest entry in the monthly puzzle club. You answer the door. It’s the friendly post person Sam with a parcel – the latest entry in the monthly puzzle club. You answer the door…
Such is the life of Wilmot, a small sugar lump-shaped factory worker who enjoys puzzles and home décor. Postie Sam brings you a box of puzzle pieces which you dutifully rearrange into a selection of fun and quirky designs. Things start off pretty simply and get gradually more difficult as you progress through the game’s eight seasons of puzzles, but it never gets too hard that it detracts from the extremely relaxed vibe.
I will admit before we get any further that I found myself getting a little addicted to Wilmot Works It Out. After finishing the main game, I should have closed the app and opened a document to write this review. Unfortunately for my deadlines, I instead started a marathon mode game and lost an additional 12 hours on top of the main run time of 8-10 hours.
Yes, ok, I did spend a good ten minutes trying to make an owl and a peacock fit together before realising I was looking at two pieces that belonged to different puzzles, but it was never hard enough to elicit frustration. The game is really clear with you – while you have pieces that can be assembled, Sam won’t bring you the next box. As soon as you click the last two pieces together (even if they don’t finish a puzzle and need more pieces before things come together), there’s a knock at the door and a new box of puzzle pieces.
As well as being the mechanical driving force behind the puzzles, Sam the postie is really the beating heart of the game’s sense of narrative. While the previous game starring Wilmot featured dry and sarcastic ‘motivational’ posters and impatient customers, Wilmot Works It Out has sweet, outgoing Sam. Wilmot is the classic silent protagonist so you only learn what Sam offers up of her own accord (aside from a few generic prompts like ‘ask her about her sister’), but it’s enough to get a real handle on the character.
I don’t think the one-sided nature of how the interactions are portrayed detract from the feeling of the friendship our cuboid protagonist has with Sam. You can easily fill in the blanks, assuming that when she invites you down the caff for a coffee, you go along, gleefully gossiping about your weird neighbour with the four broken-down cars, and Sam’s sister outstaying her welcome. For a game where the core mechanic is doing jigsaw puzzles and the protagonist never speaks, it has a surprisingly deep sense of character.
The gameplay itself consists of wandering around in your hallway fitting together square puzzle pieces. When you make a match, the game gives you a small visual effect and a satisfying audio chime, making it both clear that you’re correct and enjoyable to be correct.
As with any puzzle game worth its salt, Wilmot Works It Out provides a core loop that traces a familiar pattern. You start off assessing a situation with a blank, or perhaps bemused expression, without any clear sense of where to go. You then enter the phase of trying. This piece is yellow, and this piece is yellow, so I’ll put them next to each other. This one is full of similar abstract shapes as this one, so we’ll do another little group. Pretty soon you’ve muddled your way into a realisation, a moment of “Ohhh we’re making two pictures here, one is a mushroom-coloured leopard and one is a mushroom forest!” Pieces get rearranged and redistributed accordingly. Then, there’s the cascade. This goes with that goes with that goes with that. And bam! You have a finished puzzle. Or at least, you’ve put together as many pieces from that parcel as you can, and Sam’s back at the door with the next one.
I am sure that some fans of Wilmot’s Warehouse will find Wilmot Works It Out lacking in some way. There’s none of the same time pressure element so your organisation of pieces can be as haphazard as you like, the only limit being the space available to you. However, I think it’s more likely that the missing element will be the sense of a personal visual language that you create as you unload stock in Wilmot’s Warehouse. There’s really only one way to solve a jigsaw puzzle, and that doesn’t really lend itself to conversations. Personally, I wasn’t too bothered by this – Wilmot Works It Out is a great, fun game on its own merits and can happily stand beside the previous game. If you really enjoyed that element of Wilmot’s Warehouse and are hoping for more of the same, be warned that you won’t find it.
To my mind, it’s not even that Wilmot Works It Out ‘doesn’t live up to its predecessor’. I just think it’s a different game that explores different mechanics. And that’s fine - good, even. Developers should be free to explore different parts of games that interest them rather than feeling beholden to previous successes.
Wilmot Works It Out offers an enjoyable puzzle-solving experience and if you think you’d like to spend a few hours arranging squares into delightfully designed pictures, it’s well worth your time. It does what it does very well. Just don’t expect it to be Wilmot’s Warehouse 2.
