Tanglewood is a solid game that shows there is still life in a video game era long since forgotten. I highly recommend it, if not just for the puzzles and visuals. It’s a well-made game.
Big Evil Corporation has brought one of the more unique 16-bit experiences to the Macintosh/PC with Tanglewood. Made for the Mega Drive (Genesis for American old game enthusiasts), the game absolutely screams welcome back to the late 80s, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. Some of the best games with the simplest mechanics make for epic adventures. Tanglewood is certainly somewhere in the middle between good and epic, so there is a lot of adventure to be had in the experience.
First things first, the story of Tanglewood revolves around a fox-like creature named Nymn, who has been trapped from his home. Nymn wakes up in a forest and has to go up against evil beings that range from deadly purple squirrels to pretty damn terrifying characters (your first big encounter will be with a giant angry red pig creature — it’s pretty unnerving, even for a 16-bit graphical driven game). With the help of some small round fuzzy creatures, which provide powers to Nymn to get him/her through the adventure, such as gaining the ability to glide like a squirrel, the 16-bit adventure is everything you would expect it to be on a Mega Drive. It’s a fun, terrifying, and beautiful story that really does a great job of reminding us that simplicity sometimes conquers complication when it comes to story and gameplay design.
Beyond the story, the game itself is designed beautifully. The stages are built like a Sonic the Hedgehog meets Castlevania (Castlehog or Hedgevania-like? You choose), where you have multi-tier levels to explore in a creepy atmosphere, but each level is dying for you to go fast, as the day and night bring different experiences. It’s built for you to move and shake as Nymn and get his/her paws going. The game also gives you visible cues on what’s to come with the levels and gives hints with regard to what you should be expecting with the gameplay. You will be able to see inaccessible parts of levels that you will eventually explore. Teasing such places helps to motivate the player to keep going in the game, as everyone wants to explore inaccessible areas. I mean, we all played games like Skyrim, and part of the joy of that game was seeing where you could go when you locate particular parts of the map. It’s the same deal with Tanglewood. I like that a lot, as it does open up the world a bit and makes it more than just a typical platformer that you would find on the Mega Drive. It also creates a sense of exploration and offers up a bigger world than one would expect from a game. All of it put together makes for a fun time in a large world.
Outside of the girth of the game, and the multi-tier maps, another huge plus of the gameplay is the character models. However Big Evil Corporation pulled off the models to give that sense of nostalgia for the 16-bit era, they perfected the animation and look/feel of the characters. Nymn’s model is a tragic fox-like creature that looks lost, lonely, yet determined. Even the animation where Nymn is sleeping echoes every part of his character that is created through the narrative. Opposite of the innocence of Nymn is the terrifying enemies, who are 16-bit built but contain obvious elements of wickedness, such as red glowing eyes or blood hungry teeth. The evilness of some of the antagonist in the game show some sense of evilness that you would find in movies made by Miyazaki’s anime world. They are overblown, terrifying, and perfect explanations of the world through visuals. I’m not saying all of this because I loved the 16-bit era, but I’m saying it because Big Evil Corporation did a fantastic job of doing something a bit more than the usual 16-bit game. It’s absolutely gorgeous.
All of this said the game does have a few issues in the gameplay design. First and foremost, the game tends to not give a good indication of what the player should be doing. While that sounds like this reviewer is being whiny, and that could be the case, the first hour or so with this title had me trying to strategize about Nymn’s movement a few times, as well as experiment with certain solutions as the game progressed. I shouldn’t be doing that right from the get-go in any game not titled Dark Souls. For example, the encounter with the aforementioned giant angry red pig at the beginning of the game saw me die a few times before I finally figured out what the heck to do to get rid of the pig. The first five times going up against it, I tried to outrun it. Then I tried a Mario Bros. trick and attempted to jump on top of it, though I knew that was for no reason. Eventually, I figured out that I had to lead the pig away, run as far from the pig as I could, let it catch up to me, let it try to eat me, which made it pause, then jump on a mushroom to bounce up to a ledge, and finally end its life by pushing a large rock onto its head. It took a while to get to that point. That wouldn’t be so bad trying to figure something complicated like that if it had been later in the game. Sadly, this was within the first 15-minutes or so of the game and it shouldn’t have stopped the gameplay so much. You want to go fast with the game, as soon as Nymn hits the ground in a four-legged stride, but the quick stop and shift of fast-pacing to puzzle solving through dying hurts the gameplay just a bit. The game has to pace itself and find a rhythm. Sometimes stop/go isn’t the rhythm you want from the outset.
Now, because the pacing of the game is a bit on and off, this also affects the progressive difficulty arc of the game. A good game will slowly ramp up the difficulty as you progress through it. Having to stop and think too much in a platformer, such as Tanglewood, which really should be going at a brisk pace, disrupts the player’s expectations of difficulty. Let me be frank, this isn’t exactly Dark Souls, so you shouldn’t be hitting a wall right out of the gate. There should be a nice progression upward with each step of the way adding an additional brick of challenge to the eventual wall of difficulty.
Shifting back to the positive, the puzzle portion of the game is brilliant. Having to roll things, adapt to environments, work with fuzzies to gain temporary powers, all of this plays into a deeper gameplay design than most 16-bit games of its type. For this, I adore the game and must salute Big Evil Corporation for its ingenuity to ask players to think about how to progress in the game and run through several forms of trial/error. That alone makes this a good game, although I would have loved a balance between fast-paced/puzzle.
Overall, Tanglewood is a solid game that shows there is still life in a video game era long since forgotten. I highly recommend it, if not just for the puzzles and visuals. It’s a well-made game.
