Woodle Tree Adventures Review (Nezchan)
This could be a much better game. The graphics are charming, the soundtrack is nicely chill and the lack of stuff like time limits is quite nice. It's got serious potential, but a few negative aspects really work against that potential.
The first and most damaging is the fact that you cannot control the camera. In a 3D platformer where it's very easy to mis-time your jumps, that's a quick road to frustration. Even worse, sometimes the game will change your camera angle for you, making it hard to see a jump that a moment before was perfectly visible. Add in the fact that if the character's pack is full it enlarges so much sometimes that you have trouble seeing past it and you can see that earlier potential just start to bleed away in a flurry of missed jumps.
The second flaw doesn't directly affect gameplay, but it affects immersion a lot. That is, the character animation. For the most part this is fine, and I really do like little touches like being able to jump until Woodle is upside-down. Charming. But when walking about the world, I noticed very quick that the walk animation doesn't interact at all with the ground. The speed at which you move seems independant of the motion of the legs, giving a feel of sliding about which may not seem like a lot but since you have to look at this for the entire game, it gets a bit bothersome. And to a degree, since you can't really tell speed from watching the character, sometimes it's hard to judge jumps and you're down into the abyss again.
The third is the general lack of explanation of anything. I've played up to where I was able to buy a second leaf mainly by accident. I had no idea why I was supposed to gather fruits until I pretty much randomly wandered outside the house for a bit. I'm not really sure what it does yet, since there's no explanation when you get it, so I guess trial and error? In any case, the game doesn't really give you anything to tell you that upgrading your leaf is significant, so it almost feels like the game doesn't care. Even a little fanfare would be nice.
Overall, I'd say maybe a 6.5/10. Barely recommend, mainly based on the remaining charm and the knowledge that updates seem to be planned. Hopefully they'll fix some of these issues.