Should you, could you, wood you play this puzzler?

Woodo is a cozy 3D puzzle game based on simple diorama assembly mechanics with a beautiful visual style. The game is a reminiscence of childhood memories playing with a tiny wooden constructor, immersing players in a peaceful, safe and creative world.

Woodo is perhaps one of the cutest, chilled games you’ll play this year. You are presented with dioramas in which you select objects in a side menu to fill in the missing spaces of what is missing. The levels do mix this up from time to time, sometimes only giving you one item at a time and you having to search for its match in what can be considered “a needle in a haystack situation”.

I played through this with my partner and found it to be a really nice game to go through together. We took turns, helped each other look for specific objects that needed filling. Some levels also have hidden wooden toys called Monks and finding all of them was challenging to say the least but was incredibly satisfying once all were found. I have to say the final one was the hardest but because we were looking for it in the completely wrong place. I won’t spoil where it is, but it threw us for a loop until I suddenly spotted it and felt such relief and anger after searching for hours for this one Monk figure.

There’s a story going on that younger gamers will like, I thought it was written well for the younger crowd.  The controls are easy to get to grips with as you zoom, pan and rotate the dioramas looking to place the missing objects. Overall, the game took around 6-7 hours for us to get the Platinum trophy but a few were added on searching for the Monks and taking specific pictures that weren’t the easiest to decipher in the trophy descriptions.

Visually, Woodo is about as cute as you can get. It’s dioramas have a wooden look to them and is charming. The framerate is solid and the soundtrack is calming throughout the experience.

The Verdict

If I had one criticism of Woodo, it’s that I wanted it to be longer. It felt like it ended just as me and my partner were getting into the groove of things, but I do hope we see some kind of sequel down the line. Other than that, it’s hard not to recommend if you love a calming puzzle game.

Score: 8.5