Anyone who has read this blog for long knows that I loves me some puzzle games, especially those really intricate creations where you have to put together some really complicated process from really small parts. SpaceChem, Factorio, Last Call BBS. Give me a bucket of parts and a goal and I’ll figure it out eventually.
Those games tend to ramp up pretty fast, though. Lilliput’s Workshop, released earlier this week by prolific Shanghai developers CottonGame, aims to ease you into the construction set puzzle game genre by giving you a small wooden train, some tracks you can lay, and a simple goal — gather blocks and stack them to the design they give.
It takes many puzzles before they introduce the first programmable element, the turntable and the switch that allows switching tracks. Then the fun can begin — but that’s just the start.
The islands are inhabited by tiny “Lilliputs” who apparently knew your granddad, who possessed the hexagonal box the Lilliputs and their town and their train came in. They’re pretty sure that you and your granddad are the same person, and who are you to tell them differently?
But they need help. Things have gone to pot since your grandfather last played with them, and they need you to help them get back on track.
It’s a cozy little game, to be sure. The game gives you a little hint before you start each level just to get you in the right… train of thought. Your progress is tracked in an old book; two chapters in and I’ve had to solve a couple of brain teasers, but for most of them, overthinking the solution is the biggest obstacle. And what obstacles those Lilliputians are. They won’t let you work alone. They have to watch… by standing right where you wanted to lay some track.
There are issues.
It’s really hard to lay the track, sometimes. The primary way of laying track is by using the track pencil to just draw it on. Track can turn 60 degrees — one side — per hex, and it can climb or lower the height of one hex as well. Actually convincing the track to lay the way you want it to is often an exercise in frustration, requiring a lot of making, un-making, rinse, repeat…
There’s not really a good way of sharing your finished solutions — this is something that other puzzle games understand. You figured something out, you want to share it, and it’s just so cute that you want other people to go ooooh and aaaaah and how old did you say you were? and this is how you spend your time? and other fun comments.
Yes, this is how I spend my time. It’s my birthday. I do what I want.
So, verdict: approachable puzzle game with really cute theming at a pretty nice price, especially in its first week on Steam (so, like, right now). The Brio look is instantly evocative if you were a kid who played with them or knew a kid who did (or were, like me, compelled to buy Brio whenever we came anywhere near a toy store).
There’s stuff they could do better, and I hope they do. Future puzzles involve moving barriers and multiple trains working together, and working through those puzzles is going to be hard enough without the frickin’ track tool having a mind of its own.
And please, please let us save our completed levels!
