Jigsaw puzzles can be immensely satisfying and rewarding but they are not often met with excitement and wonder. Wilmot Works It Out is an indirect sequel to Wilmot’s Warehouse, which saw our square-faced friend push and nudge various blocks around to fit them together. This sequel turns those blocks into art pieces, meaning that you join the blocks up to create a lovely picture to hang on your wall. It is simple, wholesome, relaxing and honestly – addictive.
The gameplay loop for Wilmot Works It Out is straightforward. Wilmot has signed up for a puzzle club that delivers a new parcel via your chatty post lady every time you finish a new picture. The parcel has pieces from two or three different puzzles though and so as Wilmot you need to push them around the screen in a grid-based fashion to sort the pieces out. The finished puzzle art can be as small as 2×2 squares, or as large as 6×6 squares, and all kinds of long or wide shapes in between. Often puzzles follow a colour or design theme too which makes sorting them out a little trickier late in the game. When a puzzle is finished, its name appears on the screen and Wilmot can then push it to the wall and hang it. Magically your postie arrives with a new puzzle box and so the circle of life continues.
Some puzzles are spread across long periods of time, slowly building up as you go, whereas others are solved quickly. Wilmot’s living room area is quite large so you never run out of space to move or push things around. Indeed, if anything Wilmot’s space is too large for the game as it never poses a challenge. Unlike dealing with nooks and crannies in Wilmot’s Warehouse, here things are open plan and plain sailing. As you finish more art pieces, you can decorate other rooms in Wilmot’s house and I feel like the game missed a trick by not moving you to different rooms and having the playing area in different shapes and sizes.
What does work exceptionally well is the way how puzzle pieces snap together. As you nudge a piece next to where it needs to be, a visual and audio cue highlights it’s in the right place. Leave it there and it’ll auto-connect to the other piece. If that then means pushing out a large clump of pieces will cause you problems, you can break those chunks back up again and rejoin them at your heart’s content. Wilmot can push a huge train of blocks around – he is infinitely strong. Busy work doesn’t really exist here and the experience is more relaxing, streamlined and zen-like for that. What this game lacks in difficulty, it makes up for in wholesome, cosy vibes and the effortless controls and pushing mechanics make it a dream to play.
Lastly, it would be remiss of me to not mention the beautiful, colourful, vibrant and squishy cute art of Richard Hogg. It brings so much personality to the game, it would be half the experience without it. Adding to the charm is Eli Rainsberry’s relaxed lofi soundtrack. When paired together, these two art forms are a formidable force for cute and chill. The main game takes about 7-8 hours to complete, at which point New Game + opens up with marathon mode. This adds some more bite to the overall game experience as the main game has no space or time pressures. In the main game, puzzles are broken up into seasons which means you’ll only receive bits for 2 or 3 puzzles at any one time. For marathon mode, any puzzle in the entire game (plus some new ones too) can arrive at any time! Your playing area is much larger and it is a longer, harder variant of the game. If you don’t want to find the game a complete pushover, I recommend unlocking and then trying this mode for the ultimate Wilmot Works It Out experience.
Whilst some of the technical organising charm is lost by its relaxed, simplified approach, much is gained from the game’s streamlined focus on progression and ease. Wilmot is satisfying to play, and offers constant progression and new things to build at a fast pace – or a snail’s pace if you want it. It feels so much more than a jigsaw puzzle but this is a jigsaw puzzle with a Sokoban room design. More than the sum of its parts, this is a very enjoyable way to relax.
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