Playful puzzling rewards curiosity
After almost 14 years, I am still delighted byWindosill. It’s still a joy to poke and prod at the wee indie puzzle game, tugging on orbs, spinning carousels, and jabbing at the many beaks and eyeballs and mouths and noises emerging from an ever-shifting box. It’s such a reward for curiosity. And it still looks great too, with that unaging smooth vector art from developer Vectorpark. Now it’s out on Android phones and tablets too. I bought it, and really enjoy how much a touchscreen adds to the tactile experience.
Windosill is a series of single-room puzzles which feel somewhere between little curio cabinet and cardboard theatres. A box of geometric plants dripping with dew and buzzing with life. A display of interesting items, hinged paper legs and an eerie doll and a little house and a twirling crib mobile of ghosts and a springy thing and a clock and folded cloth and waves which ripple as you drag and and and. They’re full of objects which spin and rattle and shake and flop and ding and plip and watch you. So fiddle and play and poke and figure out the sequence of events you must perform to find the cube which will unlock the door and let you roll your little wooden car into the next scene. Maybe you need to feed a bird. Maybe you need to grow plants and catch seeds. Maybe you need to steal something. It’s a lot of trial and error, sure, but what joyous trial!
Living creatures in the scenes have such a surprising amount of life to them simply from observing your movements with curiosity, their eyes following and necks craning. It’s a simple trick yet performed so well. It feels like we’re all playing through these scenes together, my curiosity feeding theirs and theirs feeding mine.
Windosill has always felt tactile as you knock objects about and tug to break ties, just the right amount of weight and give to everything. Doing that with my fingertip on my tablet touchscreen is even better.
