Woodworm

Most grid puzzlers are about addition: push the crate onto the switch, stack the block, connect the pipe. Woodworm runs the other way. Each level supplies a block of wood and a target shape, and the only verb that changes the board is eating. The player controls a tiny wood-eating grub in a workshop. It crawls and climbs over the block and chews it away one tile at a time until only the sculpture remains. The game turns subtractive design into a ruleset, and the premise sounds like a cozy novelty until gravity gets involved.

Developer Samuel Pratt has worked this idea before. Woodworm expands and reimagines Pratt’s free 2024 PICO-8 game, now renamed Woodworm Classic. The commercial release keeps the premise and adds updated pixel-art visuals, new audio and many more puzzles. A Version 1.1 update then added seven more puzzles, multiple save slots and easier movement controls. That history frames the purchase. The core idea already exists for free, so the paid version has to justify itself through volume, polish and puzzle design rather than novelty alone.

The positioning is clear and unpretentious. Woodworm is a single-player premium puzzle game on Steam for Windows, macOS and Linux, with full controller support, Steam Deck support, Steam Achievements and Steam Cloud saves. It also sells on itch.io for $9.99. Reception so far is small but warm. On Steam, user reviews lean positive, and the itch.io page shows a high rating. Players call it a fresh, clever idea, a worthy follow-up to the free original and “a puzzle gem.” That sample is too thin to settle anything, and the praise comes with a caveat: the late game’s difficulty draws the most complaints. That tension between an inviting premise and an unforgiving endgame decides who Woodworm suits.

• Subtractive sculpting: Every level supplies a block of wood and a target figure. The solution is whatever remains once the worm has eaten everything else.
• Gravity-aware geometry: Removing wood changes what holds the block up, and the finished figure has to settle into place. Planning the intermediate shapes is the real puzzle.
• A climbing, crawling protagonist: The grub moves across the grid and climbs surfaces, so the wood is both the material being removed and the terrain the worm travels over.
• Undo and reset: Cheap rewinds make experimentation free, which lets the design rely on hypothesis and correction.
• Wide difficulty range: Puzzles run from gentle introductions to very hard brain-teasers.
• Version 1.1 additions: Seven new puzzles, multiple save slots and easier movement controls.
• Steam feature set: Full controller support, Steam Deck support, Achievements and Cloud saves across Windows, macOS and Linux.

The Carving Loop

The loop is easy to state: look at the target, look at the block, remove the difference. If Woodworm stopped there, it would be a tile-deletion exercise that anyone could solve by chewing patiently from the outside in. It avoids becoming busywork because the worm cannot eat from nowhere. The grub crawls across the grid and climbs surfaces, so the wood it plans to destroy is also the ground it moves across. In a design built this way, eating the wrong tile early can strand the worm away from the next one. Order matters as much as selection.

That creates two constraints that work against each other: the shape the player must reach, and the access needed to reach it. Good puzzle design lives in that friction. Woodworm gets it from three verbs (crawl, climb, eat) plus gravity, which is an economical rule set for this much tension.

Gravity Does the Final Cut

Gravity gives the premise its depth. The block does not hang in space. As wood disappears, what remains has to rest on something, and the target figure has to settle into its final position. The player is therefore solving for a sequence of intermediate shapes, not a single end state. Each shape has to hold together, or give way, at the right moment.

This moves the work from pattern-matching to forward planning. A board can look solved in the player’s head and still fail because a supporting column disappeared one move too early. Awkward geometry makes this harder. Any figure with an overhang or a narrow base raises the question of what props it up until the last possible move. The target image tells only half the story; the other half is the scaffolding the player has to build out of wood that will later be eaten.

This is the design’s key move, and it pays off. Sculpture becomes temporary engineering, and every board becomes a small study in load-bearing.

Undo, Reset and Room to Fail

Undo and reset matter more here than in most puzzlers. Woodworm punishes ordering mistakes that may surface only several moves later. Without cheap rewinds, every failed idea would mean a full restart and a lot of retracing. Because players can experiment freely, failure becomes information. That is the right call for a game whose central skill is predicting how a structure will settle a few steps ahead. The fastest way to learn how wood falls is to watch a structure fail and rewind.

Difficulty and the Anchor Problem

The difficulty range is wide on purpose, and the top end is where opinion splits. Several players found some late puzzles very hard. One puzzle, “anchor,” frustrated people enough that the community started sharing hints. That pattern is common in the genre, and it cuts both ways. A puzzle that sends players off to compare notes is memorable. It also means the game’s own support ran out before the player’s patience did.

There is no built-in hint system, and one player asked for a level editor or a built-in solver. A solver would defeat the purpose. A graduated nudge, though, would let players stuck on a single board keep going without leaving the game for a forum thread. As shipped, Woodworm expects players to grind through or look elsewhere. Puzzle purists will respect that. Players who value steady progress will not.

Controls and Content

The easier movement controls in Version 1.1 deserve credit, because input friction in a grid puzzler is never cosmetic. When every tile eaten is a commitment, a stray step costs an undo and breaks concentration. Fixing movement after launch shows a developer attending to the right problem. Multiple save slots suit a game that a household might share, or that a player might want to restart without wiping progress. The seven new puzzles add weight to a package that has to justify itself against a free predecessor.

On that point, the paid version’s case rests on many more puzzles, new audio and updated art. Players calling it a worthy follow-up suggests the expansion clears that bar. Anyone who finished Woodworm Classic should still expect a familiar premise. The value lies in the expanded puzzle set and the fuller presentation, not a new idea.

In a carving puzzle, the art’s first job is legibility. The player has to see at a glance which tiles belong to the sculpture, which are waste and where the worm can go. Pixel art on a strict grid suits that job well, since every tile reads as its own unit. The workshop setting and a wood-eating grub give the game a warm, tactile identity that a more abstract presentation would lack. Moving away from PICO-8’s tight palette and resolution gives the updated visuals more room for detail. Players single out both the pixel art and the music for praise. The music matters more than usual in a game where a single board can hold attention for a long stretch.

On performance, a 2D pixel-art puzzler of this scope is light on hardware by design, and the listed Steam Deck support fits that profile. Movement is discrete and tile-based, so the design makes no reflex demands. Input latency matters far less here than in any action game.

• Desktop parity: The Steam release covers Windows, macOS and Linux, so the game is available on all three major desktop platforms.
• Controller vs. keyboard: Grid movement maps naturally to a d-pad or arrow keys, and full controller support means neither input is an afterthought. The easier movement controls in Version 1.1 should help both.
• Steam Deck: Official support and a board-at-a-time structure make the Deck a strong fit. One puzzle per sitting is a natural handheld session.
• Steam services: Achievements and Cloud saves are Steam features by definition. Players who want saves synced between a desktop and a Deck should buy on Steam.
• itch.io alternative: The itch.io listing prices the game at $9.99 for players who prefer that storefront, without the Steam-specific services.
• Free on-ramp: Woodworm Classic, the free PICO-8 original, lets anyone test whether the core concept clicks before paying for the expanded version.

Woodworm takes a premise that sounds like a whimsical one-off, a grub eating a block until a statue remains, and finds a real puzzle in it by making gravity part of the chisel. The design rewards foresight over tidiness, and it builds its difficulty from a handful of verbs rather than piled-on gimmicks. Samuel Pratt’s expansion of his own PICO-8 game adds the content, art and audio a paid release needs. Version 1.1 shows sensible post-launch priorities in its movement controls and save slots.

The cost is a top end that can shut players out. The “anchor” puzzle’s reputation is a real warning, and with no built-in nudge, a stuck player’s only way forward is a community thread. We recommend Woodworm to players who want hard, honest puzzles and will sit with one board until the logic gives way. Those who want a gentler ride should start with the free Classic version and see whether the idea grabs them first.