Woodle Tree Adventures Deluxe Review
Game Details
Title: Woodle Tree Adventures Deluxe
Developer: ChubbyPixel
Publisher: ChubbyPixel
Website: https://www.ferrarafabio.com/
Genre: Platformer, Adventure
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Age Rating: PEGI 3
Release Date: 23/12/17
Price: £4.49 – Rapid Reviews were very kindly provided with a review code for this title. *Currently on offer for £1.79*
In Woodle Tree Adventures Deluxe, you play as a small tree stump trying to save the land from total ruin by collecting small droplets of water. There’s a heavy focus on nature and the environment right from the outset, and this plays into the games 8 different worlds, the character and enemy designs as well.
This being predominantly a platforming adventure title it has your traditional woodland, water and desert-themed environments. Each stage is presented in 3D, and you’ll be collecting red apples across each one to unlock later stages further, as well as being able to unlock additional combat abilities with your leaf weapon and a small cosmetic change for your woodland companion.
There are different enemies throughout, but they all require just one swift flick of your leaf to eradicate. There’s not a lot of challenge in that sense. At the very start of your adventure you’re told by a very ancient-looking tree (not dissimilar to a certain Great Deku Tree for any Zelda fans out there!) you’ll need to collect three water droplets across each stage before you can move onto the next, as far as finding them goes it is pretty linear in most respects. There’s little room for further exploration as the environments are presented on a floating 3D landscape, there’s a definite Minecraft feel to it.
The music is very serene and subtle throughout your time playing; in all honesty, I didn’t take much from it and felt there could have been a little more in the way of a soundtrack. Graphically you probably won’t be massively impressed, it’s by no means awful, but it just lacks a little polish. Especially when it comes to the platforming elements as there were some moments where I would jump continually, and my character would be jumping upside down. Some of the more significant gaps between platforms also provide a lot of frustration because your character movement is so slow and can feel like you don’t have the momentum to leap across, which brings me to my next problem.
The character designs are cute, and the environments provide a good challenge collecting all the apples and water droplets. However, your character moves incredibly slowly, so it takes an age to get anywhere. If you jump, you move faster than putting one foot in front of the other, which feels a little backwards. There are no obvious checkpoints across any of the stages either so when you die you tend to go right back to the beginning which feels incredibly tedious, especially when you’re at that final hurdle and couple that with the slow character movement.
It starts to feel more like a chore than a challenge. The camera angles are all fixed so you can’t rotate it at all, it did cause some issues when it comes to turning corners or judging the distances between jumping the larger gaps. However, the addition to zoom in and out of every stage works very well and helps you assess the scenario and whether you’ve collected everything.
Once you’ve finished the game, which should only take 1-2 hours as it’s relatively small, there’s no reason to re-visit the stages except for your enjoyment or if you missed a couple of apples. But you’re not given an overview of how many are across each stage, so that relies on you remembering where you missed any.
Woodle Tree Adventures Deluxe is a cute title that has some charm and great ideas, and it’s a classic platforming adventure title. It’s let down by poor character movement and a few junky camera angles, and with just 8 stages you will be done with the game fairly quickly. That said, for £4.49 it’s not a steep price, and I’m quietly hopeful they’ve improved upon the original for the sequel that came out last week. Keep your eyes peeled for my review later this week on that one!
Rapid Reviews Rating
You can purchase Woodle Tree Adventures Deluxe from the Nintendo eShop on the following link, https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Woodle-Tree-Adventures-1321276.html
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