The nicest thing that I can say about Risky Woods is that it's a sick joke.
You've likely been following this blog enough to tell when I have especially negative feelings about a particular game. I skip past the halfhearted introduction, the explanation of gameplay systems, all the other rigmarole. Whatever breathed life into this piece of trash couldn't have been of this planet. Actually, I take that back. Seeing the depths of mankind's cruelty over the course of several millennia is evidence enough. A person, or perhaps even an entire team created something that only they can derive pleasure from. The letters received from players expressing intense anger, sadness, and regret after purchasing their game likely tasted as sweet as the blood of an aristocrat would to a vampire.
The goal of each stage is to either rescue all of the sealed wisemen or destroy a boss. This is accomplished via a series of mechanics more annoying than the last, all the while getting hounded by an endless deluge of fiends. Destroying the walking or flying jerks will drop coins, which might as well not serve any purpose because the hero has to crouch just to collect them. This is intentional, as there are a handful of items you won't to pick up. Thing is, why must this apply to something as common as the coin? They're everywhere, but nobody is going to stop what they're doing to collect them, especially with the clock ticking away. Adding to the annoyance is that all coins are dropped on death, which happens far more often than you'd think.
Risky Wood's idea of health sounds like it should be cool, but the implementation is butt. Basically, your health doesn't have a max. If you obtain enough restoratives, you'll be awarded an extra life. The catch is that you might only have 1 or 2 blocks of health on that new life. If you take a couple of hits, you don't merely go back to your previous life but with a full bar of health. You just die and accept all the penalties that come with shuffling off the mortal coil. That means not only do you lose a bunch of useless coins, but also your weapon loses some of its power, and you're pushed back to a previous checkpoint. This "previous checkpoint" can mean restarting a boss if you died during the fight. However, dying doesn't restart the clock, which creates even more problems for your miserable ass.
Running out of time doesn't mean death. Instead, you get kicked back to the beginning of the stage, minus some of your health. Well, it can also mean death if your health is low, but whatever. Anyone who manages to get this far is already neck deep in the shit. The typical stage allows players 4 minutes to complete their task. Quite a lot can go wrong. You could waste time on the "Simon Says" puzzles, eat an apple that puts the hero to sleep, forget to grab a key and get sent flying backwards, or any number of little dumb situations. Basically, this game is explicitly designed to punish you for playing it. Everything you do feels like a mistake, destroying your confidence as well as any hope for a better tomorrow.
It should come as no surprise that this thing isn't any fun to play. Our hero has a criminally large hurtbox. He can't go anywhere without getting bombarded. Attempting to evade anything feels fruitless. Also, the sad sack is cursed to live in a realm where platforms are ever so slightly narrower than they appear to be. Don't ever blame yourself when he walks over a ledge to the Grim Reaper's embrace. He made his bed. He can fall of it. Perhaps most disturbing is that Risky Woods has an insidious side to it. There will be those rare times where the dots actually connect, you get some decent power-ups, and you might even start to feel like you're playing a functional game. I'm telling you this, because I fell for it. Then when things went right back to being terrible, I thought it was all my fault. Swear on my everything, it's starting to feel like I'm describing a sociopath.
Now here's some bullshit. One of the statues contains a wiseman. The other? A fire spell that wrecks our loser dumbass protagonist. It's impossible to tell them apart. The game eventually requires you to shatter fake statues to find keys anyway, so.... I don't even know what to say. It's stupid. I hate it. I don't want to talk about it for another second.
Fuck Risky Woods. It's nothing more than Ghouls 'n Ghosts meets a bag full of middle fingers and kicks to the groin. Apologies to anyone who could ever be a fan of such filth,
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