Wilmot Works It Out Review – Lightweight, Puzzle Pros

You have to sympathize with Postman Sam. Every day she brought Wilmot the next installment of his Puzzle Club subscription, and every day she tried to talk to him—about the weather, why there were five cars in the neighbor’s driveway, her sister Ruth moving in, her ‘s next walking holiday…heck, she even invited Wilmot to go on holiday with her at one point. A little ahead of my time if you ask me, but who am I to stop a human from having a relationship with a sentient white cube?

Wilmot, however, knew nothing of this. While it’s unclear what prompted him to leave the warehouse he made famous in 2019 (was he fired due to operational cuts? Or did he just spend too much time making aesthetically pleasing storage wings? Alas, its light-hearted yet earnest script shifts from has not appeared) delves into these issues), Wilmot’s latest career is as a “stay-at-home puzzle enthusiast and home decorator.” Instead of using his right-angled good looks to sort and haul abstract materials onto a conveyor belt, he uses the same muscular shoulder button squeezes to carry and spin square picture pieces, and once they flash and squeak softly , show what you’re holding and the item you’re holding matches the one next to you – click them together to create a colorful piece of art to hang in his home.

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It’s a blissful existence, sure, but it sure is confusing all the time for this guy, so much so that you almost think Wilmot might be a bit of a jerk behind his constant happy smile. stool. For example, he’ll occasionally get a rare dialogue prompt to ask about Sam’s sister, or later ask Sam how his own attempts at the Puzzle Club went (puzzles again), but most of your interactions with this always-enjoyable post Ladies it boils down to “receive the goods, close the door, and take a nice photo with your latest package.” I really admire Sam’s tenacity in this, because bless her, she’s the heart and soul of this gentle little puzzler, providing a much-needed human touch to Wilmot’s otherwise rather abstract tableaux and bringing it to life every time Deliveries are all rooted in a warm, friendly atmosphere. Embrace having a hobby that you can share (somewhat) with other people.

Wilmot herself seems uninterested in Sam’s daily chit-chat, but her presence here is important. First, she’s the puzzle messenger, handing out puzzles every day so you have more and more picture packs to solve. In Wilmot Works It Out, a package doesn’t always equate to a complete puzzle, and as more packages arrive, you’ll often be dealing with two or three puzzles at once. Not only does this help keep things fresh, but it has an added benefit: you’ll feel a real, low-key excitement when you finally find those last few pieces you need to complete another painting you’ve been “several” in the game. After finishing the painting and hanging it on the wall (indeed, Sam’s powerful knocking on the door was the highlight) the only real indication that time exists is beyond the four windowless walls of the Wilmot corridor an indicator of how consuming his obsession with puzzles is).

Distributing shards in this drip-fed manner also allows developer Hollow Pond to pull a few cheeky quick shards at you every now and then, mixing in shards that look similar enough to pass as possible stable mates when they’re scattered around you . floor, but is actually a different puzzle entirely. You’ll start to group them together to get your bearings, but then you realize, no, this yellow dotted background forms a picture of some smiling red cherries, and this dotted yellow background belongs to a bunch of top-down red Chess pieces, for example. It’s nothing complicated and most of the time you can tell immediately which pieces go together based on the color scheme and pattern. But receiving them in batches like this creates a slight layer of friction and prevents it from becoming a complete and obvious knockdown.

What’s more, Sam’s delivery times are always convenient whenever you run out of available puzzle pieces to piece together. In a way, she’s the gatekeeper of the puzzles, setting the pace for your mural’s twists and turns, so you always know when it’s time to move on, or when there are still some puzzle pieces left that can be pushed side by side. I admit, there were times when I thought I had done everything possible with what I had available, but when Sam didn’t arrive it made me look a little closer at what was in front of me and led to some Real revelations that I might have glossed over if the delivery hadn’t been so staggered.

But most of all, Sam is the beating heart of puzzles in Wilmot Works It Out, sending you puzzles about her walks in the Alps while on vacation and joining the puzzle club herself because she can see How much joy it brings to you and usually just being a lovely presence. For example, when she went on a trip and her taciturn male replacement showed up for a few days, I did start to miss her chatty updates a little bit, and was oddly relieved when she came back. Indeed, Wilmot’s obsession with puzzles paints a rather lonely little existence for the ever-smiling white cube, and Sam’s gentle pleas for him to leave the house for once, all building to an unexpectedly touching finale. puzzle.

You’ll also miss Sam’s presence when you turn your attention to the game’s Marathon mode, which gives you a larger space to place your puzzles, as well as completely random packages, with no rhyme or reason to the puzzles you receive. . This mode isn’t unlocked until you’ve completed the main story, but it does suffer a bit from being overly familiar as it cycles through the vast array of images you’ve just spent the past six hours piecing together. I found myself able to simply remember which parts went together without making any proper new mental connections like I did the first time. But my biggest pet peeve is how these marathon packages simply go through your letterbox – no knocks, no happy postman – and by the time you pick the last package off the doormat, another one has arrived. I understand that endless mode is supposed to be smooth and distraction-free, but it also does feel colder and more clinical, which highlights how much of a difference Sam’s sunny disposition makes in the main portion of the game.

Overall, though, Wilmot Works It Out was a very comfortable and enjoyable experience. It has absolutely no pressure or consequences, and it doesn’t make you feel particularly smart or clever like other puzzle games. But it does manage to keep you feeling warm and fuzzy for six hours, in which pauses are renamed “coffee breaks” and each so-called puzzle “season” can be completed in just 30-40 minutes, Giving you a decent, bite-sized chunk of the game to play with while still feeling like you’re accomplishing something. Every painting created by frequent Hollow Ponds collaborator Richard Hogg is a weird and whimsical delight, looking at owl faces, tumbling flounder, maps, knots, sleepover parties, little Toy racks and so on, everything started to take shape. It’s not exactly wholesome fun, especially when they’re listening to Eli Rainsberry’s calming muzak. But the real star here isn’t Wilmot, it’s Sam, and I hope we see more of her chattering in whatever comes next for this mysterious little cube guy.

Finji provided a copy of Wilmot Works It Out for review.