Woven Preview

There’s something special about a game that can tell a story about a woollen elephant, not because that’s an especially interesting topic but because it’s just so damned adorable. Woven does exactly that, kind of: You play as Stuffy, the woollen elephant, and Glitch, a robotic firefly, in a beautifully stylised woollen landscape, accompanied by a cheerful piano and woodwind score.

Woven plays like a point-and-click, with the mouse aiming a spotlight from Glitch that can be used to direct where Stuffy goes. All the interaction with the world is done through action menus that reside at the bottom of the screen, which greatly remind me of the old adventure game interaction menus. This is something I feel isn’t done very well, because the mouse is your navigational tool needing to click interaction buttons that aren’t where you’re wanting to go means that it is easy to click accidentally and move away from the point of interest.

The main thing that drew me into wanting to play this is the weaving mechanic: Stuffy can be rewoven to have a different body with different abilities. As an elephant, he can stomp, pick things up, jog and push things, and these abilities are split across his body parts. Using a machine that looks suspiciously like a sewing machine, you can change those body parts to another woollen animal once you’ve scanned them with Glitch.

A very Tweed Tree

You can also change the design of your skin for each part of your body to a variety of different designs and colours. There are a few unlocked at the start, but more can be collected in little acorns. This mechanic was actually introduced as a puzzle, so there definitely can be gameplay reasons to wear different colours. The customisation is very good, with two or three patches on each body part that can be customised.

The story is told through a poem, which only adds to this game’s incredible charm. Despite this only being an early alpha build of the game, the story is fully implemented and you can play the first half an hour of it. This is a story about unusual friends working together to help each other, and despite being cliched it’s adorable. It also looks to have a potentially dark turn somewhere along the line, especially with how the demo ends.

Woven is an exceptionally promising title that is still very early on. It’s gone through Greenlight, and has started a Kickstarter. I really enjoyed what game is there and I really want to see where they go with this story, these mechanics and this world. There are some things that need tidying up, but really I don’t think it’s anything major; just some contextual buttons to replace the currently clunky interaction menus.