Risky Woods

Risky Woods is an ancient game from 1992. It's a whopping 31 years old at the time of this review. The game lacks support for any modern gaming display resolutions (or widescreen monitors), hasn't been modernised or updated to run smoothly on modern gaming PCs. Despite this lack of modernisation, it carries a pretty high price tag for such an ancient game. This seems to have been put on Steam as a nostalgia gouge, or just a cash grab to try profit from abandonware. This abandonware platformer has been dumped onto Steam as a nasty cash grab. The game itself is so old it runs in DOSBOX and could fit onto a 1.44MB, 3.5" floppy disk. Gameplay itself is a vague ripoff of better games from the era like GODS (and that wasn't really all that great). It's a side scrolling platformer/shooter where you shoot waves of enemies and try stay alive to get to the end of the level. It's clunky, real clunky. It's also a console port, from the ancient era where PC gaming started to get held back by console quality games appearing on PC gaming hardware, so here we start to see the beginning of consoles perpetually holding back PC gaming. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio, due to the age of the game, it predates the 16:9 widescreen gaming standard established back in 2006. It's possible they're marketing this towards people using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game is being specifically marketed towards people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming. It's obviously not going to look right on a modern 16:9 gaming display. Bewilderingly, the game doesn't include proper audio controls, so you can't turn off the annoying background music, you'll need to alt+tab out and stop the music using the Windows sound mixer. This is obviously not okay and it's unclear why the developers chose not to include this basic feature. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. Because this is designed for consoles, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the inferior console gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the console-centric developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for consoles forces upon a game. Once more, console peasants have made gaming worse for everyone. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. Risky Woods is relatively expensive for an abandonware nostalgia gouge, at $9 USD, and it's not worth it. The game is just too old, hasn't been modernised. And as the old saying goes, you can't go home again. Even when it was new, this was never a triple-A game. This is the kind of game that went almost directly from the warehouse into the cheap bargain bins at the front of the shop. Now, on Steam, without any modernisation? This is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $9 asking price for this game could get you games like "Tomb Raider Remake", "Assetto Corsa" or "Civilization VI". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. There's also thousands of free, superior quality games on Steam. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]

This is 2nd worst version, after the st version. They didn't even give us the special edition dos version, which is twice as smooth. Where's the Amiga version... The BEST version? I've seen all the other version and the Amiga version is the best I think at this point, the devs should remaster the amiga version and improve the hit detection. 1. Amiga 2. Genesis (I have this game on switch and evercade it has gameplay differences), 3. Dos special edition, 4. Dos 5. ST. Maybe they can put all these versions in one pack. and if they make a remaster, maybe put them all in that as a bonus Maybe call it Risky Woods Remix. At the very least, Release the Amiga version plz. If it has to be emulated, the A500 is too slow, It needs A1200 emulation and I've only seen it working on FS UAE

Well, it's not bad, although it could be better for redefining keys and allowing my Logitech F310 to work properly. I know most hardcore gamers prefer the WASD keys for the basic movement instead of the cursor keys. But I'm a retro gamer and have habitually gotten used to the cursor keys like I used for those 8-bit and 16-bit computer games like this game. Also, I would like to see if they could have a remake for Amiga AGA or CD32 if possible. Because it was disappointing that not all Amiga games like this one never had the chance to use more colours rather than 32 colours. It was sad that both the newer A1200 and Atari Falcon didn't make a huge success as their computers didn't gain them enough profit and ended up in a dead heat as both the Commodore founder Jack Tramiel - who was CEO of Atari Corporation after he left Commodore in 1984 after his business vendetta against Irving Gould from Commodore. Anyway, so please can we have Risky Woods in AGA and maybe eliminate some of the flaws like the <<< and poison apple items? Also, I used to own the Risky Woods 1991 Amiga Beta version that didn't have those bad items. But using the WHDLoad for Risky Woods Amiga OCS/ECS does have the hack option to remove those bad item effects which is ridiculous. And one more thing, I think I remember in Stage 5 in the start that the first Eye-Key is unreachable and that the monster door curses the player to teleport to that unreachable platform and remove 5 or 6 health points - which seems daft. Although I believe that Dinamic Software had financial struggles and was bankrupt on the same year this original game was released. I don't know much about how the Ruiz brothers struggled, but to be honest I did wonder if EA had published their games badly...

Only for those who want to revisit those old times, where games didn't take more than a couple of megas, or even less. This game is 30 years old!

https://youtu.be/ci7dHfT6d8U Lacking any manual the ancient controls are near impossible to parse out during play while the difficult curve is far over tuned.

Avviso: Per colpa dei processori moderni il gioco non ha un limite di fps perciò va piuttosto veloce rispetto alla normalità. ^^; Un gioco carino che è presso chè uguale a come lo ricordavo velocità esclusa. Solo che per colpa del mio limite (non mi trovo a giocare con la tastiera) non è possibile giocare con il joypad. Anche se dosbox riconosce il controller xbox 360. ^^; Ma, se vi assale la nostalgia e siete bravi a giocare con la tastiera potete acquistarlo scontato almeno del 80%. ^_^ P.s: All'inizio c'e il controllo anti-copia ma potete selezionare qualsiasi simbolo che il gioco parte lo stesso. ^_^

Fájdalom

Un clasico de plataformas muy buena

Questo è un gioco carinissimo uscito nel 1991, MA CHE PURTROPPO HA RICEVUTO UN PORTING PESSIMO... DAVVERO PESSIMO. sconsiglio vivamente

Actually better controls than I expected. But only for the brave gamer with a soft spot for ancient euro jank. The flying ant eaters will mess you up. No risk, no woods.