Wilderplace

Deceptively simple puzzle game. Each of the mechanics are simple but they work together in interesting ways that makes it difficult to know how the level will shake out by the end. Starts out with incredibly simple puzzles, but quickly grows more and more interesting, and I felt like as soon as I was grasping a new concept the game threw at me they would immediately bring a new thing to play with. Interesting, if sparse story underpinning the whole game, trying to bring balance to the garden, I tried adding my own challenge to some levels trying to save the robots or woodsmen from dangers as well as balancing the garden. The only con I can think of is that the endgame can be pretty annoying. It makes sense it should be challenging (and it was) but its designed to get out of hand very quickly, and its very difficult to recover if you dont solve things very quickly, and very hard to solve things quickly without picking one side definitively. Perhaps it can be a challenge run, but I found it rather frustrating at times, and mostly tried to leave each level as quickly as possible rather than play it out and fix things.

The hand-drawn art is catchy, and the puzzles are just as original. The game slowly introduces path-finding creatures who interfere with your attempts to clean up the garden levels. As their number grows, expect to feel a sense of chaos. It makes for a very strong, unusual flavor of puzzle mechanics. To be honest, it took me quite some time to like it —it's so frustrating to have woodsmen or miners messing up your plans, to feel the usual puzzle-games [i]control[/i] seeping out of your hands. But the late game made it entirely worth it. Big thanks to the designer for delivering this daring gem.

Disclaimer: I was involved in beta testing this game. My favorite thing about this game is the use of NPC players to create the puzzles. In a way it harkens back to Arcarde games such as Pacman where the predicability of the NPCs leads to ideals movements. Here though, the limited AI is a feature, not a reflection of limited technology. This pairs well with the turn based nature of the game, giving players who enjoy testing their read-depth the time to work out what will happen next. Using NPCs as the puzzle pieces creates problems as well. While the NPCs are introduced to help you learn how they move, as the game progresses it's gets hard to keep track of the different features of each NPC resulting in hard to predict situations. I suspect fandom could/will present a solution for this problem with a wiki that lays out how the different NPCs work. I would have found this very helpful in overcoming the learning curve of some of the later levels. Early on in playing I tried to use the mouse controls and found them to be too slow. Moving to keyboard and tweaking some of the settings really helped the game play for me. Overall, I enjoyed playing Wilderplace a lot. The art gives the game an independent feel while the production level shows this is more than "just a hobby project". The music fits well and evolves with the game. And while the game plays as a series of puzzles, the story that unfolds in those puzzles is clear and complementary to the puzzles themselves.

Extremely relaxing puzzle game. The atmosphere is spot on. Minimalist design, simple concept, relaxing music.

Really good and peacefull game. It's exploring a simple game mecanic but go as deep as possible with it. The art and sound design is so unique and personal. I am very curious for next projects !

The hand drawn art style felt good the whole time I played and I got surprisingly drawn into the simple but not simplistic story. As a puzzle game the levels definitely start off easy, but as mechanics get introduced it quickly gets complex, though still never excessively hard. I also appreciate how often a new ability or mechanic recontextualizes elements that I've already seen and really contributes to the feeling of a rich world.

needs more attention !