Little Woody may be the shortest demo I’ve ever played, but it certainly left me wanting more. My favourite way to cut through the chaos of multiplayer shooters or terrifying horror games is to sprinkle in some light-hearted games, whether they be sims or puzzles, I don’t care, as long as it resets my adrenaline.
I stumbled across Little Woody after playing one too many Arc Raiders matches. With a free demo currently available, I thought there was no harm in checking out this 2D point-and-click puzzle game and having a change in pace. The only reason I was wrong in thinking this is actually because I enjoyed it too much, and suddenly reaching the end of the demo enraged me more than a backstab in Arc Raiders could—I was just starting to get into the puzzle-solving groove.
But even if Little Woody’s demo may be painfully short, what I played was enough to convince me to wishlist the game and start a countdown for its release.
Waking up in an abandoned test facility, you climb out of a broken test tube and stand on your own two feet, as some strange, walking, thinking, sentient tree. There aren’t any directions to tell you what to do, but that’s the whole point: you just wander through the facility staring at buttons and half-ripped posters, figuring out what the next best step is.
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The biggest puzzle in the demo sees you create a bionic arm to help you open doors, with some water, a half-broken processing line, and maths; it’s a lot for a sentient log to do moments after it sprang into existence.
Luckily, this puzzle, like all the others, is relatively straightforward, or at the very least intuitive. Through a process of trial and error, I quickly understood which ratios I needed and what order I needed to sort the machine, making Woody a brand new bionic arm, capable of opening doors, and… waving. Ok, he didn’t use it too much afterwards, but opening doors certainly helps progress.
Little Woody’s demo certainly ended too soon for me, but that just means I now have the prospect of a longer, relaxing puzzle game to look forward to. There’s currently no release date on the Steam page, but it does say the aim is for Q2 this year, which really isn’t that long of a wait at all.