Tails by the Foxfire

Indie Spotlight Review of Woodo by Tiny Monks Tales & Daedalic Entertainment

Is there any image more idyllic than fresh baked bread and homemade apple jam, shared in a rustic wooden cottage while surrounded by a thriving vegetable garden, apple trees in bloom, a bright blue lake, and a sky so clear it becomes a blanket of stars each evening? If you felt the tension leave your body, then you need to play Woodo: the cozy block puzzle game by Tiny Monks Tales & Daedalic Entertainment currently taking over the cozy scene on Twitter & Bluesky, which follows the protagonist Foxy during her summer-long stay with a distant relative named Ben. At first Foxy feels exiled from society when she’s cut off from her internet circle and her phone is little more than a paperweight, but with time, she comes to understand Ben’s way of life and gains new appreciation for the world around her as an adventure to be embarked upon, rather than something to hide from.

Tails by the Foxfire was generously provided with a game key for Woodo by Daedalic Entertainment (thank you so much, I can’t even put words to the avian squawk that left my body when I saw the email!) and we couldn’t wait to play through the whole thing! Keep reading for our hands-on rundown and review!

Woodo Foxfire Review Score: 5/5

Price Point: [TBD, game key provided by Tiny Monks Tales & Daedalic Entertainment]
Fun Factor: 5/5
Gameplay: 5/5
Story, Characters & Worldbuilding: 5/5
Maps & Environment: 5/5
Music: 5/5
Recommended: Yes!

Does Woodo Have a Story?

From the moment you boot up Woodo, you’re immersed in story. The game begins by having you assemble a treasure box, serving as both a quick introduction to the game’s vibe and to its gameplay mechanics. A treasure box is the perfect introductory point for Woodo, too, as it anchors the fact that you’re sharing in someone’s precious memories.

Once you’re into the game proper, you’re immediately greeted by the warm, friendly voice of the narrator and main character, Foxy, who recounts one special summer spent in the country with a distant relative named Ben. When Foxy first arrives at Ben’s home, she feels out of place and completely cut off from civilization when she can’t get much signal on her phone and can’t chat with her online friends. However, over the course of the summer she spends more time with Ben, lets herself be curious about everything he’s up to (gardening, woodworking, singing songs, and making that wonderful bread and jam I mentioned earlier) and her perspective completely changes: the country feels less like an exile and more like an adventure as Ben takes opens her eyes to the beauty of the world around her, and the value found in peace, stillness, and the little things.

Woodo isn’t your average RPG or visual novel in this regard, though: rather than being an ongoing narrative where you click your way through, Woodo provides the parts for wooden block dioramas that come to life with every piece you complete. You can rotate these pieces, interact with them to make them perform an animation, enjoy the soothing clicking of wood blocks and immersive sound effects like water trickling or a rooster crowing, and earn more of Foxy’s story as you progress further towards each diorama’s completion. Woodo is interesting because it brings to life the feeling of completing a puzzle with a loved one and listening to their story. Foxy is a wonderful narrator with an easy, comforting voice, so you’ll easily lose hours putting each scene together, getting lost in the details while learning a little something about life along the way. If you’re curious about the NPCs like the geese and the chicks, then you won’t be disappointed either: each character gets a profile in Foxy’s journal following each level, so you can learn more about them too!

What Makes Woodo’s Gameplay So Satisfying?

If you’ve been hanging out on Twitter or Bluesky, you’ve likely already seen the cozy community going nuts over Woodo, and for good reason: its visuals are bright and amazingly detailed, it’s got a strong message about feeling out of place in the ‘real’ world and the different ways in which we escape, and it encourages you to take your time with a low-stakes story while you drink in the atmosphere with a peaceful soundtrack and immersive sound effects like wood clacking and birds singing. I used the word ‘idyllic’ above, and Woodo is just that: it’s an exhale that’ll loosen your shoulders, with gameplay that’s exactly what it says on the tin. Sure, some dioramas are more complex than others, and some have mini dioramas within dioramas (the fact that Ben outfitted a birdhouse and a mousehole like tiny little houses with amenities is absolutely adorable, and so on-brand for his gentle, thoughtful nature I could cry just thinking about it), but no matter how intricate the diorama is, your objective is always, reassuringly, the same: put the pieces in the right place. There are no timers, and not ever so many pieces that you feel frustrated that it’ll get tedious. You’re just here to play for a while in this harmless, nostalgic little world that feels every bit like a beloved pop-up book and listen to Foxy along the way.

Take Your Time: Woodo Invites You to Play at Your Own Pace

With how much I’ve got on my plate between full-time work, planning around my upcoming renoviction, and organising an international move, life can feel like it leaves no time for stillness and contemplation, and it’s often tempting for me to rush or get antsy if I’m not getting through a puzzle quickly enough. Not so in Woodo! Something about its soft, rounded edges, bright colours, and reflectiveness let the tension out of my shoulders, stilled my racing mind, and let me play without feeling the crushing weight of reality for a while. Maybe it was Ben’s unspoken lessons to Foxy about appreciating the moment while you’re in it, and treating each new situation as an opportunity for adventure, but Woodo felt like the perfect game for this transformative time in my life, like assembling these dioramas was exactly what I needed when it felt like everything I knew was falling apart. What’s more, the ‘trust the process’ style puzzle assembly as I unlocked and placed each new piece helped me find some order in the chaos, and turning each diorama around and around in search of where this or that piece went helped me order my own thoughts so I felt more equipped to take things as they come. It’s thematic too, actually, in a way that’s masterful if intentional: by rotating the dioramas, you see things from a new perspective, which can help you get unstuck if you don’t understand where a piece is supposed to go. Just like Ben and Foxy learning how to understand each other, looking at things from a new angle is how you progress in Woodo, and you’ll often find that the more pieces you place, the more those details you missed before come into focus: you find homes for pieces you couldn’t identify as the whole picture starts to take shape. Take your time, appreciate your surroundings. So long as you don’t give up, it’ll all fall into place.

In Pursuit of Nostalgia: Woodo’s Blocks Build a World Where Our Memories Live

Woodo is another in a rising number of games (Dragon Quest VII: Reimagined, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Pokopia, South of Midnight, The Midnight Walk, and Aikyam to name a few) using unconventional art direction to create a feeling of nostalgia, and does so to great effect. While playing with the blocks in Woodo, I was taken back to my own younger days where, like Foxy, I always felt cut off from everything I was passionate about when my parents would take me on holiday to a bed-and-breakfast or rental cottage out in England’s most beautiful middle of nowhere. I’d be so bored, as if there weren’t rolling fields to explore or laze in while soaking up the sights, sounds, and smells of life away from the town or city. I’d sulk, feeling out of the loop with my online friends and other things I could be busying myself with. Looking back now in my mid-thirties and under continuous hectic stress, I finally understand that was kind of the point.

Playing Woodo during this unpredictably transformative period in my life felt like perfect timing. As you may or may not know if you follow me on socials, my home of 7 years is about to be torn down, and I’ve been having a hard time reconciling that in a matter of months, I won’t be in this place anymore; I won’t be living with these friends I’ve seen every day for almost a decade. It’s that period of quiet before the goodbye that Foxy mentions, and it’s been something I’ve been pushing to the back of my mind because it hurts to look too closely at it. Soon, we’ll have to start putting our things in boxes and taking our posters off the walls. We’ll have to work out what to say, because ‘bye’ feels too heavy, and a speech feels too dramatic, but our time together is worth something of substance. As I close the book on Woodo though, and this chapter in my life, at least there’s one thing I won’t doubt: that I’ll treasure the memories we’ve shared in this imperfect little home we’ve built, and that no matter how far apart life takes us as we all embark on our separate adventures, we will surely meet again.

Video Game Reviews, Deep Dives, and Previews at Tails by the Foxfire

Thank you again to Tiny Monks Tales & Daedalic Entertainment for providing us with a game key so we could experience the adorably charming world of Woodo and follow Foxy on her adventure!

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