Wilmot’s Warehouse Review

While I was at this year’s UK Games Expo (convention report here, if you’d like to know all about it) I popped along to Shut Up & Sit Down’s stand. I was chatting to Tom when I noticed a flyer on the desk, and immediately got far too excited when I saw Wilmot’s Warehouse the board game on it. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a video game about organising boxes in a warehouse. That might not sound exciting to you, but trust me, it’s a zen-like experience when it’s going well (for all of five minutes when chaos intervenes). The board game couldn’t hope to emulate the video game, so instead it veers off at an unexpected tangent into memory game territory. And you know what? It works.

“I was wondering if you have any pirate memory games suitable for children between the ages of 4 and 8”

I’m of an age now. My short-term memory isn’t what it used to be, so the idea of a game that relies on memory to do well is something I’d usually run a mile from. Well, less run, more get in my car. Wilmot’s Warehouse does things differently though. For a start, it’s a cooperative game, so it’s not just my leaky brain I have to rely on. Secondly, it borrows from some techniques I’ve heard about before.

When I was younger I remember a guy (with delicious irony his name escapes me) who’d appear on various entertainment shows on the telly, who could remember shuffled packs of cards in perfect order. When asked how he did it, he used a technique whereby he imagined a walk he knew well, then he mentally walked that route in his mind, adding the cards as people he’d meet on the way. More recently you might have seen something similar in the TV show Sherlock, with the Mind Palace. Wilmot’s Warehouse builds on this idea of creating stories to help you remember where things are on the board.

“Why don’t I just look at the tile on the board if I want to know where something is?”, I hear you cry. Because, dear reader, when a tile is drawn and added to the board, it’s flipped face-down. You have one opportunity to come up with a meaningful description of what that tile is and where it is in relation to the other face-down tiles on the board. This is where your own little stories come to life.

Jackanory

Before you even start to craft a story, you’ve got to know what a tile represents. Take this one, for example. What do you think this is?

Is it half a boiled egg? The wheel of a scooter poking out from the mudguard? A really angry eye, presumably with conjunctivitis?

The answer is that it’s up to you. You (usually) collectively decide, then place it somewhere on the board that makes sense. Making sense is very loosely applied here, as you may well find your stories cross the line between creative and surreal at times. Let me give you an illustrated example from a game we played.

1. The first tile was a speech bubble, fairly self-explanatory.
2. Well, it would have been, but we decided this is a duck. So the speech bubble became a quack.
3. Clearly the duck was wearing lipstick, because ducks are famous for their love of cosmetics.
4. Oh, and it was sucking a lollipop. So the order is duck, lips(?), lollipop. Glad that all makes sense.
5. The duck appeared under a star, or at least it did at first because…
6. This is clearly the ‘ducks capacitor’ from its DeLorean (yes, I made the Quack to the Future joke), meaning the star was actually a bright flash.

Bear in mind this is just six tiles here. This sort of nonsense goes on until you have 35 tiles on the board. All face-down, all reliant on your collective story-telling power to remember where they are. Good luck.

Wait, there’s more

If all of this wasn’t enough, there are a couple more flies in the ointment. Each day in the game is represented by a stack of seven tiles to place, and on top of each of Tuesday to Friday’s piles there’s a Mandatory Idea card. These add some arbitrary rule to placing each tile in that stack. Some of them are easy enough (each tile must be related to something smelly), whereas others are harder. There’s one that means that only the person turning the tile and the person to their right can look at the tile, for example. Those players can describe it for the rest, but they never know what it actually looks like. Or maybe you’re restricted to using a single word to describe the tile. There are some really devious ideas among them.

These ideas play havoc with the game’s final round before the big reveal. Once every tile is down, each player is given a stack of cards and you start a timer. Players rifle through their cards trying to find the ones which match the tiles on the board, and they try to place them on top of the matching tile. Easier said than done, especially under pressure from the clock and not necessarily knowing what all of the tiles actually look like.

It’s unadulterated creative stupidity, and I love every second. You’ll utter sentences never before given breath to, and never to be repeated before the inevitable heat death of the universe. For instance, I have now said “No, that’s the blue horse’s b*ll*ck. It goes to the right of the chainsawed beaver’s coffin”. Have you? The true beauty of the game comes from spouting such nonsense and watching the other players nod along in agreement, like you just said something sage and profound, you idiots.

Final thoughts

Wilmot’s Warehouse is a bit of a revelation as far as memory games go. In fact I’d go so far as to say that it’s the new standard for memory games. Other games have leaned on the idea, including one of my favourite games, El Grandé, but even then the Castillo was calculable and only a small piece of the package. Throwing everyone in the same boat warehouse is the key to its success. By making it co-operative it removes the biggest problem inherent in any memory game – some people (me) have terrible memory. You can’t even quarterback this game, because there are simply too many things to remember, and so many hurdles thrown into your path by the Mandatory Idea cards. Everyone gets input and everyone feels equally responsible for your collective success or failure.

Games which build on a successful name or franchise always trigger my inner skeptic. I’ve been stung by far too many cash-ins over the years, from Ocean’s licensed games on the Spectrum 48K, through THQ’s disastrous games on the SNES, and with every soulless cash-grab since. Wilmot’s Warehouse doesn’t try to emulate its namesake, it just borrows a premise, an aesthetic, and a sense of humour, and runs with it. This is the way to do it, IP licensees.

The folks from Shut Up & Sit Down were involved in its development, but again, don’t let this raise quizzical eyebrows. They know their way around a light, fun game, and it shows. Even through to the QR codes in the rulebook next to your completion times. Scan one to see a familiar face giving you a job appraisal video, and have a little smile to yourself. I don’t see if leaving my collection now, it’s the perfect social glue for family gatherings and impromptu visits from friends, and it’ll have you laughing your socks off. A light, whimsical, superb example of how to turn an unpopular game mechanism on its head and turn it into a success.

Review copy kindly provided by CMYK. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

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