Windosill

Windosill
Developer:  Vectorpark
Category:  Puzzle (Logic)
Released:  May 2009
Usual Price:  £1.99
Hours Played:  1
Controller Compatible:  No
Rating:  0 Stars

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This is a very simple, point and click flash game that has the player clicking objects on the screen to see what will happen. There are only about a dozen screens in total and it has clearly been put together on an extremely modest budget. But is it any good?

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Menus, Progress &Stats

Windosill does not have a menu screen. When you click the starting icon on the desktop you are taken immediately to whichever screen you had arrived at on your previous session. In the bottom left hand corner there are a series of tiny icons which is essentially your in-game menu. The choices are very basic: exit game; about windmill; get it for the iPad; toggle sounds; full screen and reset game. The full screen option just didn't work on my PC as I just got a black screen which meant I had to alt-tab out of the game to make it appear back in a window again.




The game just takes you from one room to the next without giving any indication as to how far you have to go or how much of the game you have completed. There is no menu screen with a "Level-Select" option that allows you to replay previous screens - not that you'd want to - and there are no stats whatsoever. The length of time spent in the game obviously depends on how good you are at point and click games - or how long it takes for you to get frustrated and succumb to the good ol'  YouTube walkthrough. Personally, I completed the game in about an hour but after you have completed the game you could probably speed-run it in less than 10 minutes.

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Gameplay

To begin the game, you are shown a screen consisting of various objects (see the panel above). After clicking on random things and seeing interesting little animations, you eventually work out that in order to progress you must place the small white cube into the small square above the door so that you may open it and shove the little wooden truck through it. As your truck passes through you are then taken to the next screen and presented with more objects - but there is always a slightly different mechanic in working out how to exit the room. The principle is always the same: find the small white cube, slot it in the hole above the door, pick up your truck and roll it out of the door to get to the next screen. 

The game involves lots of clicking and lots of trial and error to work out how to get that elusive cube. The drawback, in my opinion, is that clicking objects to animate them in different ways is not very exciting. To my mind it's akin to supplying children with something to interact with at a museum with a view to making them more interested in the subject matter. It's also more like being involved with an interactive piece of art than playing an absorbing video game. Let's click this button and see what it does - oh, isn't that nice... Let's click this button and see what that does - oh that's interesting. Well, actually, no - it's quite boring really. With some solutions being quite obscure, I ended up getting frustrated and bored and putting up the walkthrough from YouTube and finishing the game out like that. This is not how a game should be played!

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Sound & Graphics

You get the bare minimum of sounds in this game. The truck kind of clunks when it is knocked against things, certain objects make subtle noises like chirps, grunts, springy, whooshing and buzzing noises and there is no music to speak of. It is very minimal indeed. Similarly, the graphics are kept crisp and simple as well. They are at a low and fixed resolution - you don't really need  finer graphics with a game of this type - and I guess this all adds to the subtle art style that the makers went for. It is a very quiet, zen-like game and not exactly into blowing you away with elaborate eye-candy or stunning sound.

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Conclusion

After hearing positive and encouraging things, Windosill was a disappointment for me. Yes, I guess the artwork made it unique and, yes, it was not a cliched-ridden affair that's been done many times before. But the puzzles were still obscure and the gameplay still got me frustrated and bored. An occasional peek at a walkthrough is ok as far as I'm concerned but breaking immersion and resorting to a YouTube walkthrough to complete half a game can never be a good thing.