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Well, Youtube HATED the pilot episode of [Bite-Sized!] and barely showed it to any of my subscribers, which is kinda sad. Youtube doesn't like short-form content unless it's straight up shorts (or a channel does ONLY short-form), so it pushes these small videos down, and in the long term they may even hurt the overall channel visibility, which I am not particularly excited about. 

So, I'll try to include a handful of games into each episode, making the videos somewhat longer so hopefully Youtube doesn't just throw it into the garbage pile. It will result in longer posts here on the blog; I hope you don't mind :D It kind of defeats half of my purpose, which was making smaller videos that are easy to watch and also easy to make, but luckily it doesn't defeat the other half, which is sharing tiny games that I love!

Wilmot Works It Out

We'll start out strong today with Wilmot Works It Out. I keep a close eye on all games Finji publishes because they have yet to publish a game that I don't absolutely adore. Wilmot Works It Out is a puzzle building game that serves as somewhat of a sequel to Wilmot's Warehouse that released five years prior.

You play as Wilmot, a warehouse keeper by day and a Puzzle Club member by cozy evening. After you subscribe to Puzzle Club, your friend and neighbor, Sam the postwoman, delivers you your first parcel. It starts a Puzzle Season that can be completed in around 40 minutes to a little over an hour, depending on how good you are with this type of thing. Some parcels might contain more pieces than you need to complete a picture. In this case, you might want to group them somewhere to the side for the time being, until other pieces are discovered in another parcel. In later seasons I found myself surrounded by piles of puzzle pieces that did not yet make a full picture, and there was Sam knocking at the door to give me another parcel. You might think it gets overwhelming, but it really doesn't: Sam will only deliver you a new parcel after you've put together a picture.

You can use completed puzzles to customize your house: group them by theme and hang them in different rooms however you like. You can even change the frames, if you want! The puzzles themselves are really fun and imaginative: some of them are long but narrow, some square, others consist of just four pieces. Some of them have seemingly similar elements, which leads to you trying to put together a picture that is actually two separate pictures, or maybe even three. The puzzles were designed by Richard Hogg, and I loved their whimsical nature.

There is also a story happening in the background that you can follow by listening to Sam when she delivers you a parcel; outside of the puzzle solving you seem to be hanging out a lot. She also goes on vacation sometimes and brings memories to share.

Wilmot Works It Out is a fantastic game if you like assembling puzzles. It is relaxing, great with a controller, and for a while it was my perfect coffee break game. I highly recommend it! Also, you might want to check out Wilmot's Warehouse, another puzzle game by the same devs about Wilmot's working days running a big warehouse. I haven't played it myself; to be honest, it looks slightly intimidating to me, but who knows, maybe it's right up your alley! 

Donut County

Donut County is a physics-based puzzle game where you play as a hole in the ground that swallows everything it slides under. Every time you start off in a new environment, you are a tiny hole and can swallow only tiny things, but then, with each swallowed item you grow bigger and bigger, until you chomp down a restaurant or a whole chicken coop.

The destructive, but very addictive gameplay is interlaced with story parts, where the swallowed residents of Donut County, many feet underground, are trying to understand who is behind all this mess and how to get back out onto the surface. Raccoon BK and his best friend Mira are the pair of protagonists, but there is no shortage of cute characters.

The gameplay is deceptively simple, but I have to say that swallowing everything, from random things to trees and buildings, is very cathartic :D Some swallowed items can modify you: for example, a swallowed furnace will make you gush smoke and hot air around, which might even be useful for that particular puzzle. Or maybe you need to fill yourself with some sort of liquid! Also, on every map you'll need to figure out in what order to swallow things to gradually grow bigger.

Donut County is a wonderful light-hearted experience that can be completed in about 2 hours or so. It is a delightful little game.

Short Trip

And last, but definitely not least, the tiniest game in my collection of tiny games - Short Trip! It is an interactive illustration created by a solo developer where you drive a tram through mountain villages. Oh, and all your passengers are cats!

Short Trip is fully hand-drawn with pencil and paper, in amazing detail, and it has some really nostalgic quality to it. I don't know how to describe it, but when I look at it, and even more so when I play it, I feel the sense of tranquility and quiet adventure.

Drive a scenic tram, pick up cats on the stations lost in the mountain villages, drop them off and just enjoy your time. There is also a "Scheduled Mode", where you can earn high score and gratitude from your passengers if you arrive exactly on time and stop the tram directly at the station. The route itself is just a few minutes, but it loops around, just like a real tram would, so if you want to relax by helping little hand-drawn cats reach their destinations, this game is for you. Absolutely charming.

That's it for today! I hope you enjoy this format, and also that Youtube will stop trying to murder my creative endeavors :D Let me know if you try any of these games, and also if there are other small games that you enjoy!

As usual, stay tuned here and on the Lair's YouTube channel not to miss out on anything. I also have a Patreon now!

Thank you very much for your time. Take care.