Woodo caught my eye when it was shown off during a recent Nintendo Direct. Flaunted as a 3D coloring book filled with stunning wooden models and characters, it was already unlike anything I’d seen before in a video game. As it turns out, the debut title from Tiny Monks Tales is so much more than its already strong premise. It’s a cozy 3D coloring book come to life combined with a casual puzzler that has a moving story to tell along the way.
Woodo’s various blank canvases are 3D dioramas you bring back to life by reassembling them, piece by piece. Its lead character, Foxy, is retelling a story of a summer she spent in the countryside, out of her comfort zone, and you reassembling Woodo’s scenes essentially represents Foxy piecing her memories of that summer back together.
Like real memories, Woodo’s puzzles can get a little messy. While you’re eased into the game by popping pieces back onto a wooden chest, and then by recreating a breakfast scene, Woodo’s ideas gradually become a little complex. The game evolves by hiding things from you. There will be drawers that need to be opened to find missing cutlery, and then puzzles that can’t be completed until you’ve found a key to unlock a cupboard door and put the plates inside.
This evolution continues throughout the entire game; until eventually, you’re solving puzzles within puzzles. Keep your eyes peeled for the little magnifying glass. That symbol indicates an item you can click on. Doing so will take you to the aforementioned Inception-esque puzzles within puzzles. Completing those puzzles might get you an item that left you stumped or stuck elsewhere. Take it with you to complete whatever might have been left unfinished, and you’ll see the proverbial dominoes start to fall. It’s incredibly satisfying.
The way each new level is differentiated from the last plays into how the game cleverly evolves too. I’ll stop short of explaining the specifics through fear of spoiling some of the more welcome surprises and satisfying moments Woodo has to offer, but it’s a lot more than just a series of 3D puzzles that need to be completed in the exact same way every time. The devs have masterfully come up with a variety of ways to not only make every new chapter feel fresh, but to also seamlessly weave them together.
Even though Woodo aims to be a game that relaxes players, you may still want to feel challenged by its puzzles. If things feel a little too simplistic, there are several accessibility options that you can adjust to make the game more challenging, or, on the flip side, to make it easier for gamers with specific needs should anything need to be tweaked.
You’ll notice that the pieces almost snap into place if you hover near where they’re supposed to be. If that’s making your experience feel a little too guided, there’s a sliding scale that lets you turn the magnetism down in Woodo’s settings. There are also settings you can use if you're colorblind, since the tiny details in the game’s dioramas would be basically impossible to find otherwise.
It can also be a little tricky to hone in on some of the smaller details with fiddly camera controls that take a little bit of getting used to.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.thegamer.com/woodo-review-wooden-3d-puzzle-game/
