Hands-On Preview: Woolfe – The Red Hood Diaries

 

Remember those fairy tales you used to hear as a child? Tales of Goldilocks and her run-in with the three bears, Little Red Riding Hood’s journey to deliver food to her sick grandmother and Alice’s wildest illusions coming true as she made her way through Wonderland were all recited to us when we were younger as we put our imagination to good use. With this feeling of imagination and wonderful worlds, a recent Kickstarter campaign has been successfully funded and will allow the public to reimagine one of these fairy tales with a modern twist. Woolfe – The Red Hood Diaries offers an imaginative and modern twist on the classic story.

An early version of the game was available to play recently at last month’s Gamescom exhibition in Germany. Attendees were able to sample 3 short levels which provided a brief look into how the game is played. With several genres featuring in The Red Hood Diaries, I’ve recently had the chance to play these 3 levels to see how the game performs for those who wish to be whisked back to their childhoods.

When Woolfe – The Red Hood Diaries was originally promoted on Kickstarter, it was pitched as being a fast-action, 2.5D platformer and, judging from what I’ve played so far, it proves to be successful in both instances. The opening level of the demo saw no combat, but looked at the platforming and environmental puzzles, which featured often throughout the demo.

A moody and dank sewer was the setting for the opening level and Red Riding Hood has to make her way past various puzzles and obstacles: From shuffling along pipes, timing jumps past steam, time-sensitive panels and box jumping, the opening level definitely provides you with a huge platform to get used to how the game handles in terms of moving around the environment. One of the instances had me forcing boxes down-stream, which resulted in me having to jump from box-to-box in order to progress, but it did take a minute or two for me to realise what I had to do, hinting that environmental puzzles will feature heavily throughout The Red Hood Diaries.

In terms of how well the platforming feels, it’s satisfying to say the least. The 2.5D camera does allow you to interact with various areas, but it can prove tricky when making that crucial jump. While you can move in mid-air and judge where you will land thanks to shadows, you can often find yourself missing a ledge because you haven’t paid as much attention as you probably should have, which results in an untimely death. Speaking of death, it doesn’t seem as though it plays a huge factor.

Checkpoints occur when you pick up (or walk through) a picnic basket; that definitive symbol of Red Riding Hood. When you die, you will return to the last picnic basket you interacted with and there is an unlimited amount of times this can happen. There is no number of lives nor is there a health bar. Once you perish you merely return to your last checkpoint and start it all again. This may have just featured in the early demo to give players the chance to sample all aspects of the game, rather than continually punish them and leave them with a sour taste.

After I managed to work my way around the dank sewer and the various obstacles, I was met with an ‘end of level’ screen promoting their Kickstarter campaign which has now ended after earning more than $75,000, surpassing their initial goal of $50,000. The second level introduced you to the outskirts of a forest, which saw me almost instantly battling against evil fairies and a wolf. The combat feels as though it’s been taken straight from a Hack ‘n’ Slash title and you are able to opt for a light or hard attack. In my time with the game, I felt the light attack to be far more rewarding as the enemies were never powerful enough to offer any sort of challenge and the light attack ensured that I was swinging the axe so quickly that they couldn’t retaliate. There wasn’t a huge amount of combat in any of the three sections and the combat wasn’t as fulfilling as it could have been, but it definitely seems as though the game’s strengths are in the platforming.

The final stage of the early demo saw Red Riding Hood making her way through an industrial area which featured mechanical toy soldiers, which again proved little challenge. Various obstacles which I had to overcome included electrified floors, vast spinning blades and thin boards to leap onto. While not offering anything truly different to the opening area, the area does hold great relevance to the story. While, as you may have guessed, the story doesn’t derive from the original Red Riding Hood story, it instead takes years of lore into consideration and creates its own tale.

Four years prior to the game’s events, Red Riding Hood’s father, Lead Engineer for Woolfe Industries, died in a work accident or so his family is led to believe. Determined to find out the truth about her tragic loss, Red Riding Hood leaves her grandmother in the safe haven of the forest and returns back to the big city. The city itself has been ravaged by fear and an array of kidnappings and it is all thanks to the CEO of Woolfe Industries, BB Wolfe who rules the town with an iron fist. It is up to the protagonist to fight her way to the top to try and uncover some dark secrets about the past 4 years.

With some interesting gameplay and wonderful art design, reminiscent of American McGee’s Alice series, Woolfe – The Red Hood Diaries looks as though it will feature challenging platforming and environmental puzzles. From the short sample I’ve had of the game, my only concern is that the combat can hopefully be improved a little and allow for some development with the character. All-in-all I’m thoroughly looking forward to it and hopefully we’ll hear more from the team at Grin Gamestudio in the coming months, as hopefully this is a title which can live up to the early hype.

While I played the demo on via Steam, Microsoft showed the game at the Xbox E3 conference showing that they are planning to release the game on the Xbox One. We’ll have more details as they’re announced.