Wilmot the anthropomorphic square has a curious but not exactly undesirable existence. He resides in a spacious, empty house to which his friendly local postwoman, Sam, brings regular deliveries of tiled puzzles; a subscription that never seems to expire. Wilmot unpacks each new delivery, scattering the pieces on the bare floor. Then he can shunt, grasp and rotate each fragment to form a coherent picture – each of which has been drawn by British illustrator Richard Hogg. Matching pieces snap together pleasingly, and when the artwork is complete it can be hung on Wilmot’s big empty walls. As soon as one puzzle is finished, Sam arrives with the next, and soon enough Wilmot’s wall is as cluttered and colourful as a Saatchi gallery.
There are, typically, several fragments left over when you complete a picture, so some of the challenge is in identifying these rogue pieces, setting them to one side (you are free to organise your floor space to suit your organisational requirements) to return to once you have all the necessary components. In time you’ll have several puzzles on the go at once, each one at a different level of completion, and it’s this arrhythmia that gives the game its unique feel, elevating it beyond a mere digital jigsaw simulator.
Postwoman Sam’s breezy dialogue, which tells a gentle story via brisk interactions, adds a bit of human warmth to the relentless puzzling. But as with Witch Beam’s zen 2021 Bafta winner Unpacking, Wilmot Works It Out is an almost therapeutic endeavour; the puzzles are neither tricksy nor demanding. Rather, it’s a game to be picked at with a sense of leisurely satisfaction, as if working loose a complicated knot. The effect is gently soothing, in the way of a jigsaw, but, when it comes to arranging your artworks, a little more scope for creative flair.
