‘Where’s Willy’ is About Finding a Face in the Crowd

Most of us will know of Where’s Wally or Where’s Waldo (localisation dependent), the book series where readers are challenged to find the titular character among a sea of obstacles and other faces.

Where’s Willy is a Pico-8 take on the long-running series, and it’s so small that it can fit in a Tweet.

I’ve been watching developer BoneVolt since they released the exceptional Jack of Spades — also on Pico-8 — earlier this year. Development of that title is coming along just great; it has even recently had to go to multiple carts due to the content size. However, the developer has also put out a new little title while working on it.

Where’s Willy is a simple hidden-object style jaunt. Your score doubles as the timer for the game, with (I believe) your score counting down in milliseconds. Each instance of Willy that you mouse over awards you with a score of 120 (the equivalent of 12 seconds), so in order to keep increasing your score you just need to keep finding the little red character as quickly as you can.

This all sounds extremely easy, but there are two things working against you as you attempt to rack-up a high score. The first is the randomized nature of the level layout. Each level is flooded with small pixel art icons, the density and distribution of which is defined by your score. This means that if you do manage to get an exceptionally high score (or, due to the limitations of the engine, have your score roll massively into the minuses) then you can get some truly messy screens.

The second, and most interesting, complication is human confidence. At the start it is quite easy to spot the little chap against the plain backgrounds and there aren’t many other humanoid forms dotted around the level. It’s quite easy to slip into autopilot and just start swinging the mouse cursor around and grabbing points through simply using information from the periphery of your focus. However, when the level density increases, and the warped versions of Willy appear, this confidence is shattered in a jarring way, and it consciously takes moments to recover.

You can play Where’s Willy for free in your browser, or as a Pico-8 cart.

About The Author

Dann Sullivan

After almost a decade of selling games, Dann decided to try his hand at writing about them instead. A few years in and he is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Big Boss Battle, where he and his team cover games of all shapes and sizes. When not in the role, he can often be found seeking out small, memorable game experiences.

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