Tanglewood

[h1]FoxMania: The Quest To Review All Fox Games On Steam![/h1] [i]Conditions for inclusion: [list] [*]The player character must be consistently a fox; the fox must not be merely a skin or a character option [*]Must have 100% working Steam achievements [*]Must not be a visual novel [/list][/i] [b]Game #3: TANGLEWOOD[/b] That was amazing!!! Nowadays it seems like every other indie game is "retro-styled". Some games, like Shovel Knight and Axiom Verge, do it right and pay homage down to the details. Some games like Evoland are only loose parodies of their tropes. Other times, "retro-styled" means little more than "The limitations in the developer's skill somewhat resemble the limitations of old consoles". But some games go a few extra steps beyond. Tanglewood is a Sega Genesis ROM running on an emulator. The game was crowdfunded and published in 2018. Some physical copies exist, meaning you can play the game on an actual Sega Genesis or Master System. A password system even lets you transfer progress between the two versions. There's even an old-styled instruction manual! If fake retro games are your thing, and if you're a Sega Genesis fan, you can't beat a brand new, full-featured, game-length unlicensed homebrew cartridge! You play as Nymn, a foxlike creature whose family abandoned him overnight, as he hunts through a forest of giant trees to find his new, safer home. Much of the game is simply about finding the way to move forward. Most puzzles involve finding a fuzzball creature, rolling it into its nest, absorbing its power, and using the power to escape the area. There are also lots of giant boulders to roll around, pressure plates to activate, and giant monsters to outrun and outwit (since you have no natural means of attack). I might describe the gameplay as a faster-paced LIMBO, although maybe a comparison to Ecco the Dolphin would be more appropriate here, at least in the way it evokes a similar sense of remote loneliness that you're a wild animal just trying to traverse and survive your natural habitat. (As a random aside, anyone who is familiar with the sound of a fox's cry might be a bit disconcerted hear Nymn howl like a wolf.) For Sega Genesis standards, this game is absolutely gorgeous! The spritework excels at being cute or creepy when it needs to be. Every area of the game is delightfully moody in slightly different ways thanks to subtle theme variations and color changes. The music wisely goes the ambient route. Persistent looping tracks are very rare; most tracks kick in at certain triggers and play only once. While the music itself isn't too memorable, it's still a masterwork in that you'll certainly remember how it made you feel. Difficulty is a bit on the easy side. This isn't a hardcore retro game, not even close. While some enemy encounters and semi-blind jumps can get mildly frustrating, and while Nymn does only take one hit to die, mid-level checkpoints are abundant and there are no lives. It only takes a little experimenting before you realize what the game wants you to do. The only real unfair aspect lies in the firefly hunt for 100% completion, as all the fireflies are permanently missable, but the game alleviates this by allowing you to revert to old checkpoints to play the level over again if you missed something (or, y'know, just use old passwords). I don't have many big criticisms of the game. Here's all I can come up with: * Though the game makes an honest effort to add variance to the fuzzball-rolling puzzles, they do get a bit stale and predictable after a while. The game needs to take more cues from LIMBO and come up with more elegant and varied environmental puzzles. * I would have loved to see more powers. How about wall-climbing? Or spitting fireballs? Maybe a double-jump? The powers were my favorite part of the game, and by the end they started feeling tragically underutilized. * A few of the sprites looked a bit silly. What's up with that ladder-climbing animation? * The final boss is little more than a glorified quicktime event. Pretty lame. Overall, this game almost felt like a masterpiece. The cute characters, the heartfelt moments, the ambient music, the sense of being a small, vulnerable creature in a great big world... And especially the difficulty and game length... so many parts of this game were done so right, and I feel very happy for having played it. 9 / 10! (Achievement Hunters: Get on this! Have a pleasant little adventure and you'll be done 5 hours later. Maybe 8 if you don't go for the 100% ending first.)

Interesting development idea, but it's not really remarkable even for a legacy game platform. It's still designed like a Genesis era game. You have to read the manual to understand controls and game mechanics. Maps are mostly empty, enemies are basic, and the music is noticeably lacking. The game still couldn't compete with some classic platformers of the 90's.

3/10 They don’t make them like this any more, YUP. reason for that i still play some of my retro games from time to time, but only the best ones. this would be one i never returned to if i had played it - game doesnt tell you anything at all. trail and error you need to figure it out on your own . spent a massive amount of time at the first check point cause i didnt know you need to again press thge button on the baby bird to gain its power from a short amount of time that lets you glide - $17

Very poor game design that revolves solely around a lot of trial and error and taking cheap shots at the player by exploiting what they are unable to see yet on their screen. Be sure to read the manual before playing, else you'll likely become stuck at some point as there's no explaination actually in the game and it's not very intuitive. Having once owned and loved the megadrive/genesis, the retro appeal of this game really hit home with some nostalgia, but once that novelty wears off it tends to get fairly boring rather quickly. Nevertheless I'll be giving it more of a chance in the hope that it may be able to change my mind.

披着屎壳郎外壳的狐狸模拟器

It's so nostalgic, yet new. Good.

(Note: I've only played the physical Sega Mega Drive / Genesis Release) Tanglewood is a puzzle platformer in the veign of games like Limbo, Heart of Darkness of Flashback. It's true there are many titles under this genre, but what sets it appart is the how it was created. This is a game developed in 2018 for the Sega Mega Drive / Sega Genesis. We're talking about a console with 30 year old hardware, limited to 64k of ram (that's kilobytes by the way), that could only output 64 colors. The fact a modern developer decided to take on the task of applying modern game design and apply it to a system as old as the Megadrive is nothing short of amazing. Yes, it's inspired by old titles, but it feels surprisingly contemporary in its execution taking the best of both of what there is to be had in classic and modern games alike. Its approach to sound and music for example is something you would expect out of a modern game, relying mostly on ambient noise to increase immersion, something which few, if any Sega Genesis games did prior to this. On the other hand, all puzzles and game mechanics are explained through gameplay and level design, never requiring the player to read a tutorial, and all of this, running on a game that is likely smaller than whathever song you might be listening on your phone.

Tanglewood is a puzzle-platformer akin to games like Abe's Oddyssee and LIMBO, with one of its noteworthy features being that it was developed for the Sega Mega Drive and Genesis as well as modern PCs. If I had be short about this review, I would say its simple but charming. While I can't say too much about how accurate it is for something that would run alongside Sonic 1, Streets of Rage and other games of those consoles, I can definitely speak for its PC version, which as far as I know is running on an emulator. As a result, I may not fully understand the limitations that might help contribute to its flaws. The gameplay is fairly simple puzzle platformer busywork. You play as a fox-like creature called Nymn to jump and solve your way through levels with a variety of powers at your disposal. Movement feels much like a more agile Sonic the Hedgehog with less emphasis on momentum, even the jump animation seems to be a callback to Sonic. You can push and pull objects, and also temporarily obtain powers that includes standard stuff such as a glide, freezing time, and pacifying beasts. The game isn't very difficult, especially if you've dealt with these sorts of games before, and I found myself figuring out solutions to puzzles sometimes without knowing it or really trying, as there isn't much room allowed for error when most of the ways you can push something is either heavily limited by blockades or consist of getting objects onto the ground floor then pushing it to the appropriate place its meant to go. While it means you won't get stuck on any 'puzzle' for too long, there isn't much in the way of satisfying 'Aha!' moments. The puzzles do still get a bit repetitive though despite its short length, but some of the chase sequences can be fun if nothing too special. The powers also feel a bit underutilized beyond the glide, which is used more so as reward for completing a puzzle to reach the next area then anything interesting beyond a single early chapter that actually does something with it. The story...well considering it is going for a Mega Drive/Genesis feel, there isn't a huge amount going on, which could be a plus or negative depending on what you like. Its pretty much just 'survive', even the final boss felt like they were just kind of 'there', doing evil for the sake of it in their own limited way. However, I was still surprised a few times in the game, to be spoilers free. Visually, I think it looks great. Nice looking and thematically distinct levels, the main character is cute and is decently animated, though I feel like maybe there could have been a few more animations, like an idle or such. As well, I personally find some of the enemies a bit bland and not very interesting to look at, and their hitboxes don't match up with their spite at times, most likely to stop players from skipping puzzles but still. Sound is strange in this game, the audio doesn't seem to have enough channels at times, so you'll just have sound effects overriding each other, though it never gets grating due to there very rarely being enough sound effects occurring in the first place. The game is noticeably quiet at times, to the point that I could've thought the level's music track must have bugged out, but even basic sound effects seem to missing from things as simple as the default jump you can perform. Even if its done on purpose, after awhile it doesn't feel atmospheric anymore, but more so unfinished at times. I will say the game's soundtrack, when it does play a single unlooped music track from it every now and then, is great and does make me wish there was more of it to help fill out the dead silence of the levels. Despite its flaws, I did enjoy my time with Tanglewood, and would say if you've got at most three to five hours to kill (it is very short, look at my playtime), though it might be best to get it on sale if you think its too much for its length.

I pre-ordered a copy of Tanglewood on the Sega Mega Drive about 10 minutes after seeing it at EGX 2018. I could get nowhere near the controller that day but I knew I had to have it in my collection. I've completed it on the Mega Drive, so that's where my hours have been sunk, but I own a Steam copy as Big Evil Corp sent me one when there was a delay to the release of the physical version (fab customer service btw). Tanglewood is a wonderful puzzle platformer where you play as Nymn, a little fox-like critter, trying to survive through a forest of various dangers. The gameplay reminds me of The Lion King and it has elements of more modern titles like Ori and the Blind Forest and LIMBO. It's quite dark at times and emotional too. No spoilers, but there's a lovely, unexpected addition to the gameplay about a third of the way through. Later there's a plot twist that I did not see coming and I thought it was a rather brave decision. The pacing is great, the beasties are varied, and the level design flows well and sets you up for success. Its challenge level felt just right, not too easy (I died a [i]lot[/i]) and not so hard that I ever became frustrated to the point of rage quitting. It always felt very fair. The visual style and the colour palette are quite striking at times, it's a very beautiful game – the sunset levels are gorgeous. And the Fuzzls are just adorable! The powers the bestow on you are nice mechanics which tie into the puzzle solving. The game held my attention completely, I just couldn't put it down. If I have one minor criticism about the game it's that it felt a bit slow to reload after death, but that's it. It's a highly polished and enjoyable game. Tanglewood was developed for the Mega Drive and Genesis first and foremost. Having been created with authentic SEGA development tools, it makes Tanglewood an utterly amazing technical achievement. For me the nostalgia of opening a brand new Mega Drive game was all part of the experience of Tanglewood. The box, the manual, the little security seal with the company's logo on (I really didn't want to remove it). Little touches like the password system and the in-game sound check, it made the whole thing a magical experience, one I've not had since the 90s! So much love and passion has gone into this project and it was so worth the wait. Thank you Big Evil Corp.

A puzzle platformer without any narration, you start the game and it leaves you to figure out what to do. At first it is confusing, as all you can do is jump across some trees and eventually come to a roadblock. But stick with it and it opens up as an nostalgic adventure from the 16-bit era of gaming (it is a Megadrive/Genesis game after all) Music is very minimal and the graphics vary from level to level but are always just detailed enough. When this is on a sale, definitely worth a look ! + Good 16-bit graphics and soft puzzle elements + Has automatic saving - Start is confusing, music minimal.