When the review code for Woodo landed in my inbox I had to resist the temptation to immediately turn on my PS5, redeem the code and start playing it, not least because the sense of rush inherent with those actions feels anathema to the central premise of the game. Woodo is a lazy Sunday afternoon in front of the TV. It’s relaxing on a beach with a book. It’s a lazy lay-in until 10AM on a weekday. Woodo is, in essence, about making time for yourself and establishing a state of mindfulness that extends beyond contemporaneous feeling and into something more introspective. Cosy? Wholesome? Woodo has completed it mate, but there’s also something a little more to it than just saccharine sweetness and pleasing whimsy.
Woodo PS5 Review
Woodo principally follows the narrative of Foxy, an introspective little girl who is seemingly content with her bedroom-anchored existence of chat rooms and online multiplayer games, having no real inclination to involve herself in the physical world beyond the glare of her computer monitor and mobile phone screen.
When she does emerge into the big, scary world of the great outdoors, she encounters Ben, an extremely laid-back young fella who lives his life at a snail’s pace, lives exclusively in the company of flora and fauna and all the while he busies himself with a seemingly endless list of physical chores that he doesn’t seem to mind doing (also slowly) at all. With the two at loggerheads initially, Woodo tracks Foxy’s journey from her bedroom to the world outside, as she acclimatises to the natural world, realises that life can continue beyond the screen, makes a new friend and gains some core memories that will stick with her until the end of her days. It’s hugely wholesome stuff that should resonate across folks of all ages, but there’s also a little more to it than that.
Make no mistake, there are all sorts of valuable life lessons wrapped up in Woodo and yet it never feels preachy, not least because Foxy’s journey itself feels relatable to anybody who has found comfort in the digital realm, but has perhaps spent a little too long there at the expense of the more earthly wonders that this life can offer. Though the real-life contemporary parallels with current and future generations being subsumed with technology and becoming socially insular in a physical sense are clear, there’s also a distinct undertone of melancholy at work here, too.
Without wanting to spoil the narrative too much, Woodo also meditates on the notion that it’s also entirely possible to gain a measure of ‘lived experience’ and happiness from the memories of others, even if they have been fabricated. The notion that this kind of phantom happiness and feeling of content can emerge through the avenue of imagination and ingesting the experiences of others, very much celebrates the idea that the human mind is powerful enough to actualise a placebo into something palpable and approximate to the real thing. Whether you’re actually going outdoors, or just reading a book about the trials and tribulations of another person, you’re still invariably invested in the human experience at large and that, as Woodo very much and quite rightly celebrates, can only be a good thing.
In an attempt to distil its mechanics into a single sentence, Woodo is a simple and resolutely straightforward diorama match puzzler. Foxy’s narrative unfurls in an overworld style map view which illustrates how her journey has been sub-divided into diorama puzzle chunks – you complete one diorama and then that leads you onto the next one with an occasional hand-drawn cutscene in-between to provide the requisite narrative connective tissue. See? Straightforward.
In fact it’s so straightforward – you don’t even need to rotate the puzzle pieces as you might do in a similar game like Puzzling Places – you just pick a piece, eye up where you need to drop it and just, well, drop it into place and marvel as your placed piece causes a burst of colour to erupt across the diorama. It’s proper low-key dopamine stuff which when combined with the gentle, almost Studio Ghibli rural coded soundtrack, proves itself to be super successful in winding you down from a stressful day – and trust me, I’ve had my own fair share of those over the last few months, so I can attest to Woodo‘s healing properties in this regard.
Each of Woodo‘s dioramas are a true treat for the eyes too, overflowing with lovingly modelled, beautifully realised wooden figures and environments rife with incidental detail (you can even see the wood grain) as you provide colour to all manner of packed bedrooms, quaint farm scenes and more besides while Foxy provides a running commentary of her life at the time.
There’s also a lot of hidden character to these scenes beyond their surface charm too, as once as an item has been matched to its place in the diorama it does a jolly little dance, while other aspects of the environment such as drawers, doors and keepsake boxes can provide mini-dioramas of their own, while gently prodding an item or creature in the environment will trigger a uniquely whimsical animation. Though the ultimate objective is always the same for each diorama, there are some distractions from the beaten path such as collectibles to be nabbed in the form of little monk figures that are concealed in things such as teapots and other such nooks, while trophies are also assigned to performing other interactions in each diorama as well.
At just a few hours long, Woodo will never have the legs to sustain any kind of serious, focused gaming session. Instead, its compact and straightforward charms should be digested in piecemeal and on an as-you-need-them basis to improve your mood, rather than as just another videogame to be finished as quickly as possible to lighten your backlog. That said, I feel quite keenly that its budget price, together with its genuinely restorative narrative and simple, though satisfying matching puzzle beats really appealed to me in a way that I didn’t really expect.
I guess that’s the thing about games and art more generally, such works can hit you when you least expect it but most need it. Certainly in this sense, Woodo is a precious and touching labour of love that hopes to pay it forward. From a purely mechanical perspective Woodo is not especially innovative and certainly not at all challenging, but it is enormously relaxing, weapons-grade adorable and potent enough in its role as a distraction from all of the awful spectrums of crap going on in the world, that it is precisely the sort of salve that I need at this time in my life. Maybe it will be the same for you too right now and if not, Woodo will assuredly, yet quietly, earn its place at some later point in your lifetime when you need it most, like a toy from a forgotten youth left in a cupboard that you rediscover years later.
Woodo is out now on PS5.
Review code kindly provided by PR.