Story:
Risky Woods story in which you play as a character named Rohan that is on a quest to rescue monks. There are five monks in total, who have been turned to stone and placed in the Risky Woods, and it’s up to Rohan to go into the woods and save them.
Gameplay:
Risky Woods is a platforming game, that as the genre suggests, has you jumping from platforms while traversing each level. Each level is rather large in size and is played by starting on the left side of the screen and making your way right to the end. Though this is the primary route each level takes, they do occasionally allow you to traverse into upper and lower sections, though not much. There are a total of eight levels stretched across four worlds, with a boss to fight at the end of each world.
Each level has a lot of enemies on screen that are rather relentless in their pursuit to stop Rohan from completing his journey, almost to the point the game isn’t much fun to play. When enemies are killed, they drop coins and these coins will be usable in the in-game shop at the end of each level. If you can kill a bunch of enemies, you could potentially get a lot of coins that can be used later to purchase upgrades
. I say potentially get a lot of coins because in order to pick them up, you have to walk over each one and press down on the D-Pad or analog stick in order to pick them up. This becomes an issue because while you’re trying to grab the dropped coins, you have a ton of enemies that are attacking you from all sides. If those enemies happen to hit you (which is a guarantee at some point), then you will drop a coin each time you’re hit.
Weapons you get include a boomerang, sword, your default dagger, and the sporadic magic spell, and all weapons with the exception of the default dagger weapon are limited in the number of uses or time in which you get to use it. Speaking of time, each level has a countdown timer and once it reaches zero, you lose one of your lives and either start the level over again or restart from a checkpoint.
Graphics and Performance:
Graphically speaking, Risky Woods looks really good for a Sega Genesis game as that’s the port that is included in this release. Rohan and enemy sprites are large with a surprising amount of detail to them, and each level has a varying amount of set pieces, each with their own subtle details. So graphically speaking, the game looks very good for its age. Performance-wise, the game runs as well as a game of this era would run on the Switch or any modern platform. Though, I was surprised that it seems to run at a smooth frame rate which appears to be at 60FPS instead of its original 30FPS or less on the original hardware, as I was expecting it to run at the slower frame rate.
Sound:
Sometimes these ports are great the way they sound and other times, not so much. The latter is the case with Risky Woods. It seems like everything in this game has had a sound effect added to it. Coins dropping on the ground, weapons hitting enemies or set pieces, and even Rohan’s feet make a sound when they hit the ground, and sometimes the character even produces an oof-type sound when landing.
These sound effects being as numerous as they are can be distracting when it comes to all of the action on screen. In addition to being just noise in the game, they often drown out the background music. Background music choices for the levels are good, but have definitely aged poorly and are rather repetitive, so because of this, I primarily played this game with the sound off.
Conclusion:
If this game would have been a remaster with the audio being completely redone and included tweaking of the difficulty rather than a straight port, this game would have been a game I could’ve totally recommended. Instead what you’re given is the game in its original format with a smooth filter and the ability to save and load save states. On top of this, you are only getting a single game with this release instead of it being bundled with a second game.
If you want to play this game, I would suggest finding a method to play this game on one of its original platforms. Either that or wait for the game to be on a deep sale if you plan on getting the game on a modern platform.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
In addition to writing articles, Ryan Byers also creates content for his YouTube channel called "Obscure Games and Consoles", collects video games, and dabbles in video game development.