The Windosill That Could

Deceptively simple, Windosill presents a little wood block car that travels from room to room (or window to window). Its journey from its storage shelf through a series of surreal, interactive scenes transforms this puzzle into a work of art.

I have said before, and I will say again: The well-crafted flash game is a rare sight. Not to say that most of them are bad, but most of them exploit the same concepts and the same methods again and again and again. Windosill is not necessarily a game in the specific sense of the word-  there is no point system. You are given no instructions and there are no rules (save the game world’s own physical constraints, its own laws of physics). The objective is conceptually simple but neither linear nor clear-cut.

The beauty of this game is its ability to sit unobtrusively there- some objects are interactive, others are not. Some of them relate to finding the key to the next stage; others are there for mere amusement. It’s quite possible to play through the puzzle a dozen times and still find new features. There is meticulous attention to detail. The illustration is smooth and simple, the subjects of the illustrations odd and unexpected. Both the animation and sound effects are highly realistic. Every oddslot object seems tactile and tangible. Materials have texture and yield and just the right amount of resistance. A review sums this up quite nicely:

[The artist] offers a world where everything is magical, where you can discover the rules from scratch, like a child. The laws of physics are more or less familiar, but everything else is new. You play with Windosill and it plays back, sharing its secrets in baby steps, never cheating, never even betraying the presence of puzzles or goals. It feels like before you arrived, all these geometric plants and bird heads and giant moons were just sitting there lonely, blue, waiting for a playmate.

Where other flash game developers may be choosing quantity and marketability over quality and innovation, creator Patrick Smith seems to have thrown both convention and preconceived ideas to the wind and fashioned something refreshing, intriguing, and delightfully simple instead. The last half of the game requires a purchase (which I have not yet done, but intend to do), but even the available levels are rewarding on their own.