Winding Worlds
iOS
After the intricacy and invention of Gnog’s fantastical puzzle heads, the first few stages of Ko-op’s new game have us stumped. Not because they’re difficult, but because the tasks we’ve been set seem unexpectedly ordinary by comparison. First, we’re asked to open a junction box. Not long afterward, we find ourselves connecting water pipes. Between the two we locate the rails, steps and screws of a ladder to put it back together. What’s going on?
That, we’re afraid, would be telling, and fortunately much of what surrounds these generic goals is typical Ko-op. You play as Willow, a kind-hearted rabbit who takes it upon herself to help people struggling with emotional problems – from a pirate whose greed caused disaster for his crew to a young girl who needs to conquer her fear of the dark. They’re found on a series of circular planetoids, which you explore using unconventional touch controls that never quite feel second nature. Rather than circling your finger, as the game’s swirling motif suggests, you use vertical or horizontal swipes. It makes sense when you see arms reach in from all sides to grab their share of a treasure pile – Ko-op can hide solutions on both axes, and the act of revealing them feels more tactile and involving as a result. Even so, it’s too easy to whizz past interactive objects, and when you wind back you may go too far the other way, the inertia occasionally making it awkward to settle in an exact spot.
And, though the worlds deliver a few cute surprises, you effectively perform the same actions throughout. Even with writing that deftly balances heart and humour (a worm doctor has a PhD in Being Long) it begins to feel a little samey; we may be dealing with different emotions, but we’re going through similar motions. As the story’s themes come into sharper focus, we begin to wonder if that isn’t intentional. Yet while we’re more than prepared to give Ko-op the benefit of the doubt, it fails to meaningfully subvert those inputs at the end, missing the opportunity to drive its message home.
Then comes Tooty, a delightfully dotty old woman whose world offers comfortably the game’s most harmonious marriage of story and systems, her particular problem dealing with time and memory in moving and quietly ingenious fashion. It’s a clear cut above the rest, and while its relative complexity perhaps explains why Ko-op didn’t make more stages like it, it’s hard not to wonder what might have been had the entire game been built around such a brilliant idea. Still, if not the spiralling success we hoped, this sweetnatured and sincere game provides an afternoon’s worth of uplifting altruism.