This chill puzzle game is so good I bought its prequel before I even finished it

There’s a great feeling you get when you read a book you like or watch a film you enjoy, and it turns out the writer or director has done some other stuff that also looks promising. “Yes! I liked this stuff! And now there’s the potential to like more stuff!”

That’s the long way around saying I played Wilmot Works It Out this weekend and I like it so much that even though I haven’t even finished it, I already bought the previous Wilmot game, Wilmot’s Warehouse. I’m going all-in on Wilmot after just a couple hours with Wilmot.

I should probably explain Wilmot, huh? Developed by Hollow Ponds and Richard Hogg, Wilmot Works It Out is a chill puzzle game where you’re Wilmot, a square. I don’t mean square like you’re some uptight dork who doesn’t think teenagers should have dance parties, I mean a square like literally and physically a square with a little face. That’s what Wilmot is, a smiling square who loves jigsaw puzzles.

Every so often a postal worker delivers a box to your door, and you spread out the pieces on your floor and put them together by dragging them around with your little square head. When you’ve completed a puzzle, you hang it on the wall, and there’s inevitably another knock at the door as the postal worker drops off your next puzzle box. That’s it. And it’s great!

Things are easy for Wilmot in a couple respects: the puzzle pieces are always square, and you never have to spin them around to make them fit: they’re always facing up. The challenge for Wilmot is that you’re almost never working on one puzzle at a time: each puzzle box contains pieces from separate puzzles, and sometimes a full puzzle is spread out between different deliveries so you’re not able to finish them until you’ve gotten all the pieces.

The other challenge, and it’s the best part: you don’t know what any particular puzzle looks like until you’ve put nearly all of it together.

That’s really what makes it so enjoyable, clicking together colorful little squares of yellow flowers and white chickens and blue sailboats and purple octopuses and hamburger-colored hamburgers and then eventually finding out what these works of art actually are. Little “A-ha!” moments are pretty frequent in Wilmot Works It Out: I knew I was putting together a jigsaw that was part sailor, part windmill, but why? Is the sailor on a mini-golf course? When I clicked the last piece into place I got the title: “Home At Last.” The windmill is where the sailor lives. No wonder he’s got such a big smile, he’s returning after a long journey. How sweet is that?

I think my favorite moment was discovering what I thought were two completely separate puzzles but it turned out to actually be the same puzzle, and clicking together the two big separate hunks into one big masterpiece was delightful. As you fill up one wall completely with puzzles, other parts of Wilmot’s little home become available to decorate, too. 

Best of all is it’s great on Steam Deck so it’s perfect for unwinding after a long day. Just like an actual jigsaw puzzle, there’s a little challenge to keep your mind from completely drifting but it’s not so tough that you can’t have a podcast or show on while you’re playing. It’s perfect for a night of puzzle solving or just a quick breather during a break. And even better news, for me at least, is that when I’m done with Wilmot Works It Out I’ve got Wilmot’s Warehouse waiting for me.