First Impression: Woodle Tree Deluxe (Switch) ~ Raindrops To The End.

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In 2017, the developers behind Suicide Guy contacted me to ask if I would take a look at their game. Last year, they asked me to take a look at the sequel/follow-up of the game called Suicide Guy – Sleeping Deeply. Now, Chubby Pixel sent over a review copy of Woodle Tree Adventures Deluxe on the Nintendo Switch. While the developer provided me with a review copy for this game, you will find my 100% personal opinion in this article. I’m quite excited to see what this game has to offer and how different their other titles are. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the content of this article and/or the game in the comment section down below.

Raindrops To The End

In this game, you play as a walking log. You are tasked by the Great Tree, which looks a lot like the Deku Tree from Ocarina of Time, to bring the water back to the world. Why do you have to bring the water back to the world? Because it’s going through a drought at the moment. After the Great Tree shows you the Fairy Tears you need to collect in order for you to save the world, you get teleported to the hub world. This hub world is the home that the Great Tree for you build and there you find a backpack (it’s called a rugsack in-game) and your weapon, the magical leaf.

And that’s about it in terms of story. I haven’t finished the game yet, but I think there will be a bit more story bits after I finished the last level. Now, I didn’t expect a grand story from this game. Because the stories in the Suicide Guy games were handled in the same way. It’s all about the gameplay in these games.

Before I talk about the gameplay, I want to mention one thing that I didn’t like about the story. In this game, there isn’t a button to skip dialogues. When I started playing this game and I read the first dialogue and I wasn’t able to advance, I thought that my Switch froze. But, you have a wait for a bit too long in order for the game to advance. It sounds like a nitpick, but it would improve the game quite a lot.

With that said, let’s focus our attention on the gameplay. In this game, you go through various levels looking around for these Fairy Tears. There is no tutorial in the first level, but a quick look at the controls by pressing the “+” key on the right joycon explains everything you need to know. The controls are easy to grasp and understand.

The goal in each level is to find the tree hidden Fairy Tears and bring them to the three cups at the end of the level. If you reach the end of the level without all three tears, you won’t be able to finish the level. While the levels are quite linear, to find all three tears, you will have to explore off the main path and look everywhere.

Checkpoint mystery

Whenever you fall off the edge of the level or get hit by an enemy, you respawn at a checkpoint. Now, at first, I didn’t understand how the checkpoint system worked, but after some experimentation, I think I understand it. Let’s say there are 5 checkpoints in a level. When you die past the 4^th checkpoint, you respawn at checkpoint 4. If you die again, you respawn at checkpoint 3, die again -> checkpoint 2. So, the punishment of death is respawning at an earlier checkpoint.

In this game, you don’t have hitpoints nor lives. So, if you are hit by an enemy, you are dead. But, you will never get a game over. Speaking about enemies, they die in one hit as well. Some will chase after you, others will stand in your way to make certain platforming sections trickier to complete. The enemies were a small point of frustration in this game for me, since the attack of your character is so slow, I ran into them quite often. Thankfully, you don’t lose your already collected tears whenever you die.

But, there is something that was ever more annoying, and that was the camera. You don’t have full control over the camera in this game. You can zoom in and out in most places. I’m extremely happy about that feature since it made certain platforming sections possible. In other sections, the zooming in or out mechanic didn’t work properly or not at all. Making some sections extremely tricky, especially when you have trouble seeing depth.

A cute cover

This game is a port of the Steam game “Woodle Tree Adventures”. In this version, with getting an additional level, the new camera system and better jumping mechanics.

Speaking about the jumping mechanics, the animation of the jump looks a bit weird. It looks a bit floaty. I think that a few more frames of animation for the jump would give it a more natural feel.

Visually speaking, this game looks very good. The world is very colorful and vibrant. The visual presentation of the game is one of the strongest points of this game. The game even looks stunning in some places. Especially some lighting effects like the sun’s rays peeking through some models, giving a sunset vibe.

Yet, underneath this cute cover, the game feels unfinished. For example, the controls of this game respond quite well but they can be quite slippery sometimes. I lost count how many times I died because my character took one or two additional steps and feel into the abyss.

Also, I felt that there was something missing during my playthrough of this game. There is barely any UI in this game. I missed an on-screen counter for the collected fruits in each level. With these, you can buy various cosmetic items for your character, but it’s tricky to know how much you have already collected. You can see this in one space in the hub world, but the counter isn’t visible at the location you can buy these cosmetics at.

All of this happens in the hub world. And there is another element that I don’t like about this game. The placement of the levels. To start a level, you have to hit the orb with your magic leaf. But these orbs appear randomly in the hub world without any indication of which ones you already finished or which one is new.

Overall, this game is quite easy. The only moment that this game can become difficult is when the controls become slippery or when the camera decides you can’t zoom in or out. But, it didn’t take me long to finish the first few levels of this game.

The music and sound effects are a bit lacking as well. While the music of this game is quite enjoyable, I wish there was a bit more to the soundtrack and a bit more sound effects. I think there are only 5 sound effects in this whole game. And that is a bummer. Speaking about sound effects, I noticed that the dying sound effect sometimes played multiple times when you fall off the edge.

Overall, this is a decent game. But, it’s lacking. The game could use a lot more polish and content. The concept is interesting and fun to play but with slippery controls, boring level design and especially an annoying camera, this game is hindered so much. This game could have been so much better then what’s released right now. With that said, I have a hard time recommending this game. While it has a ton of elements that work and work well, but there are just too many elements that need polishing or updating for me to fully recommend without any hesitation.

And that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

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What do games mean to me? – Why do I collect games?

Family members, friends or people around me sometimes ask me: “Why do you play so much games?” or “Aren’t games for young(er) kids?”. This is a question I find really difficult to answer. I don’t really like the question because you don’t always know what the opinion on games is of the other person. Some people even judge me because I collect games and not play them all. I do play the games I collect but the games I finished are the ones I’m interested in. I admit that I have played some games just to learn more about a certain genre or why are a certain series is so popular. But hey, now I’m already answering the question I asked myself in the title. Time to start explaining! And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your story in the comment section down below. (This is going to be a multi-part series of articles. So, in this article I will explain why I collect games)

Why did I start collecting games? 

Why do I collect games? It’s actually an end result of somethings that happened in my past. The first reason I started collecting video games is because of the fun trips I always took to garage sales as a child. I enjoyed seeing people selling the things they didn’t need anymore and with that money buy other stuff they could use. What was even more fun was selling the games I didn’t play anymore or wasn’t interested in anymore in order to buy some new and interesting games.

When I hear similar stories from people in other countries like America, I always hear stories of people reading Nintendo Power or any other form of media. But here in Belgium, the gaming market wasn’t that big back then. From what I can recall, there was a PC Gaming magazine that started in 1994, I would be one year old then. There was no magazine like Nintendo Power, there was [N]Gamer, that I had to wait for since it came from our neighbors, the Netherlands. My point is, that video games weren’t that big in Belgium compared to other parts of the world.

Talking about other people’s their stories, their first games are always something among the lines of Pokemon, DooM, Tetris or any similar big title. (Keep in mind, talking about my age group here. Early 20’s.) Yet, my first game wasn’t Pokémon. The earliest game I can remember is Pac-Man for the Gameboy. Where I couldn’t beat the first five levels. Yet, I adored playing it. Just seeing those little animations were adorable in my eyes.

How do I collect?

In the spring and summer time, I go to the nearest garage sale. I wake up pretty early to avoid that other collectors get to the interesting stuff before me. I save up some money to go snooping around. Most of the time, I go with my mother. It’s really fun to do since my mom collects certain plates that her grandmother had.

When she spots something, she always notifies me. She also learned me some tricks how to some games even cheaper. Since mostly last year, when a friend or a family member is on a garage sale, they call me to check if I’m interested in the games they find.

I think that most of my games come from garage sales. Here in Belgium, we don’t have a lot of stores that sell second hand games for old consoles. Game Mania, our video game store, sells games from previous generations but rarely older. Which is a shame really.

Another way that my collection grows are gifts from friends and family. When people clean up their attic, my family stops them from throwing away the games and the merchandise. This is something that makes me very happy. Receiving a bundle of games from somebody who didn’t need them anymore, it’s something that makes me happy. On Facebook, there is a group where people give away stuff for free. On occasion, there are games on there. My collection got bigger from that too.

Something that doesn’t happen a lot, but I do here and there is buying stuff for real cheap from stores. When something is on sale or when I find a big title for real cheap. I bought the BioShock trilogy for 20€. And I’m not regretting it at all. Oh, something I tend to do in game stores is looking for game bundles. When some games are sold together.

Something that really disappoints me in the current gaming market is that everything is going digital. When I don’t have a game box, cd, cartridge… I feel that I don’t really own the game in the first place.

Closing off

Back in 2012, I made a YouTube video showing off my collection. I’m not going to link it here since it’s really out dated. My room has changed quite a lot since then and my collection has even grown. When I find the time, I might make an update video… But that won’t be for the near future.

Collecting and researching games is something I really enjoy. Going to garage sales with family and friends is something that you could wake me up for any day. The big reason why I collect is because I just enjoy playing games. Getting lost in fantasy worlds or getting a relaxing experience. Games were a big part of my childhood. Now-a-days, I play games to relax, to enjoy my free time.

But games have an even bigger influence on me. I listen to gaming music when I’m at work. I read books based on games. Most of the sites, channels, Twitter accounts… I follow are mostly always game related.

In any case, I would love to hear the stories of my fellow collectors around the world. Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below. I reply to them all. So, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed this look into my personal life. In the future I will write more parts to this series so, if you have suggestions … Feel free to contact me. In any case, have a great rest of your day.