“World Collector” by Joe Williamson.
“Start with nothing. Collect the world. Find a friend.”
In the pitch-black a lone, cloaked entity emerges, and so does a shimmering piece of a puzzle – a part of the world you are about to create. Each of those mysterious tiles can be seen as a part of a jigsaw puzzle. By placing and replacing them on the blank canvas of the void, you manipulate the whole game environment and connect the pieces with each other. New possibilities open up with each tile you collect. That way, you may be able to finally make a friend in this nothingness.
“World Collector” is not just an amazing jam entry and puzzle game with beautiful pixel art as well as relaxing background music, but also a bit of a great metagame. By allowing the players to place the puzzle pieces by themselves and thereby to think about where a passage might be useful, it is like a playful, short lesson about level design. Quickly they learn that it is harder than some people might think to create an interesting level and to combine it successfully with puzzle elements.
Also, it shows off that puzzle platformers do not have to be played in a linear way. The usual formula “Go from left to right, learn new abilities, interact with the elements and progress” gets broken here, as you as a player build up everything by yourself. To create such a game in such a short timespan is truly a master stroke. [PLAY]
