The RPS Advent Calendar 2019, Dec 19th

19 straight days of RPS Advent Calendar! You deserve a break, eventually. But there's work still to be done, so open up the next door!

It's Wilmot's Warehouse!

Alice Bee: Wiltmot's Warehouse really is a belter. I was enchanted the moment I saw the trailer (which, disclosure, is voiced by Pip, late of this RPS parish).

In Wilmot's Warehouse you, Wilmot, a happy little cube, zoom around to sort and store items, and delivering them to... customers? Other workers? Who knows. They want your stuff.

How you organise your inventory is entirely up to you. Sunsets in one corner, card suits in another. A whole stack of wheels. I had Food taking up about a third, with subcategories of Food, Sliced and Food, Nuts. I kept stuff to do with politics and law enforcement in the bottom right. Ho ho.

I've said before that playing Wilmot's Warehouse made me think of Lyra reading the Alethiometer in His Dark Materials. I drift out of direct contact with my mind, so I can recall all the meanings I have given the blocks, and where I have put them. You can see all the different meanings each block could have, touching each other in a big ladder, all the way down.

The thing is, though, that while all the items you receive are very often to interpretation (what I saw very clearly as a dog tag Brendan thought was an aeroplane window??) they do actually have correctinterpretations. I spoke to the Richard's Haggett and Hogg at EGX this year, and Hogg (who created all the little blocks in the game) is a walking encyclopaedia of their meanings. When he started listing off, one by one, what they actually are, I felt destabilised - on the verge of an existential crisis, almost.

Dave: I knew that Wilmot's Warehouse was going to be a big deal as soon as I saw Graham playing a preview build for well over an hour. He has great taste.

It's deceptively simple to get into, but getting into a rhythm that actually works can be very difficult. Do you sort by theme? Maybe background colours are the way to go? Stock Takes are welcome breathers where you can change your mind and rearrange at your own pace, but when new deliveries come in, and you have to fulfil orders, it's a frantic dash, and you assign space for new stock via very tenuous connections.

Everyone has their own way of sorting stuff, and it's fascinating to hear how others do it. My partner has played loads of Wilmot's Warehouse, because she loves micromanagement games, so it is very much her jam. I thought I knew how her brain works pretty well, but as I watched her sort, in a way that undoubtedly made sense to her, I couldn't see any system in place at all.

Ollie: Yeah, it's a great game, yada yada. I've got something else to talk about. Something desperately important. Do you pronounce Wilmot as "Wilmott" (hard "T"), or "Wilmoe", like Moe's Tavern? My brother and I have been debating this for months, with no end in sight. Please put an end to it, one way or another. I don't care anymore. Just let it end. [Ollie it is pronounced out loud in the first line of the trailer, this is no debate at all. - ed]

Looking for a different door? Head back to the RPS Advent Calendar 2019!