▼ Not recommended
3 hrs
deep in the woods is an undeniably beautiful point & click adventure. not exactly for kids, as there's blood and gore and other good stuff. it's largely without text or basic functionality. the devs apparently have 10+ years of experience and about as many pc releases of their mobile games, though this is the first I've played, so others may or may not work better. this, for instance, doesn't even have an exit button and the only settings are separate volume sliders and a few languages. excellent start. esc brings up a confirmation window in the main menu but doesn't work anywhere else. way to put a crucial function only on keys in a completely mouse-driven game.
one would think mouse-based controls can't be that bad, it's a point & click adventure. well, one would have to think again. nothing wrong with supporting touch controls (calling it a 'unique touch-based puzzle experience' is a joke though) but don't neglect the main control method of the platform you're releasing the game on. navigation is awful, drag the mouse to drag the screen, no arrows to click for convenience. left, right or mouse wheel click to interact, they all do the same because laziness. no hotspot indicator or active cursor on mouseover, of course, gotta click everything to see if they do anything after the brief tutorial. only scene transitions are marked, with identical pulsating spots for clarity no matter where they lead, genius.
there's an inventory. no tooltips/names or close-ups of items, drag them to the scene to use, but why are the open and close buttons in a different place? click one, gotta move the mouse to click the other. can't keep it open all the time either because it might cover important stuff, as if there's not enough room in those unnecessarily vast and empty locations.
I wasn't even surprised by the slow typewriter effect for text display, keep adding to the ♥♥♥♥ pile, why don't you? click every sentence to make them appear instantly if you read faster than a 3-year-old. at least there's no gibberish during dialog and not much text to speak of.
no manual saving, nor multiple save slots or profiles, starting a new game wipes progress but there's a confirmation prompt at least. items and general progress gets saved continuously, location doesn't, so you'll find yourself at the starting area of the current level every time you quit. a properly working autosave system, you say? surely the stuff of legends.
anyway, you're the son of somebody, living in a forest where animals talk to you. then dad dies (not a spoiler, the first thing after the tutorial) and you swear to kill the wolf who did it with the help of a forest spirit. that always goes down well, especially if a talking bird suggests it.
next scene, some timing right off the bat. click on jumping deer until you get it right (whatever that means, white skull good, black bad) enough times so the spirit appears. and I hope you memorized all the symbols on the trees between deer jumps because there's a test now. or just try all the combinations. and now you have to help the spirit too, who was robbed of its horns, as seen in the cutscene before the deer. and so on.
as seasons/levels change, more puzzles follow if you can find them or random items. there's never welcome tile-sliding, a tedious maze with a slow-moving bug, etc. they're interspersed with more arcade nonsense, like catching waterdrops with a skull. and hooray for accessibility, nothing is skippable and there are no hints. it's rare to see a mobile game without the latter and it (and I) could've used one, so I eventually gave up, as both my mouse and my patience got worn out from all the tedious clicking. I must've been around halfway through or so, at the end of spring (couldn't find the final gold piece), so the whole thing should take around 3 hours, possibly less if you persevere.
to be fair, the game is exactly what I thought it would be, at least from a functionality perspective. a mobile game released on pc without any thought put into actual pc functionality. still, there's always hope a mobile dev has played a pc game at some point before making one (or 10) themselves. not these guys, even after all this time. very disappointing overall, if you want to look at pretty pictures, there are far better options.
small consolation that it's not sold for 10-20 bucks but it wouldn't be recommendable even for free in its current state. and weirdly enough, I found a trailer for it from 2020 but mobile versions got released at the same (march 2024), so they had plenty of time to do better, they simply chose not to.
one would think mouse-based controls can't be that bad, it's a point & click adventure. well, one would have to think again. nothing wrong with supporting touch controls (calling it a 'unique touch-based puzzle experience' is a joke though) but don't neglect the main control method of the platform you're releasing the game on. navigation is awful, drag the mouse to drag the screen, no arrows to click for convenience. left, right or mouse wheel click to interact, they all do the same because laziness. no hotspot indicator or active cursor on mouseover, of course, gotta click everything to see if they do anything after the brief tutorial. only scene transitions are marked, with identical pulsating spots for clarity no matter where they lead, genius.
there's an inventory. no tooltips/names or close-ups of items, drag them to the scene to use, but why are the open and close buttons in a different place? click one, gotta move the mouse to click the other. can't keep it open all the time either because it might cover important stuff, as if there's not enough room in those unnecessarily vast and empty locations.
I wasn't even surprised by the slow typewriter effect for text display, keep adding to the ♥♥♥♥ pile, why don't you? click every sentence to make them appear instantly if you read faster than a 3-year-old. at least there's no gibberish during dialog and not much text to speak of.
no manual saving, nor multiple save slots or profiles, starting a new game wipes progress but there's a confirmation prompt at least. items and general progress gets saved continuously, location doesn't, so you'll find yourself at the starting area of the current level every time you quit. a properly working autosave system, you say? surely the stuff of legends.
anyway, you're the son of somebody, living in a forest where animals talk to you. then dad dies (not a spoiler, the first thing after the tutorial) and you swear to kill the wolf who did it with the help of a forest spirit. that always goes down well, especially if a talking bird suggests it.
next scene, some timing right off the bat. click on jumping deer until you get it right (whatever that means, white skull good, black bad) enough times so the spirit appears. and I hope you memorized all the symbols on the trees between deer jumps because there's a test now. or just try all the combinations. and now you have to help the spirit too, who was robbed of its horns, as seen in the cutscene before the deer. and so on.
as seasons/levels change, more puzzles follow if you can find them or random items. there's never welcome tile-sliding, a tedious maze with a slow-moving bug, etc. they're interspersed with more arcade nonsense, like catching waterdrops with a skull. and hooray for accessibility, nothing is skippable and there are no hints. it's rare to see a mobile game without the latter and it (and I) could've used one, so I eventually gave up, as both my mouse and my patience got worn out from all the tedious clicking. I must've been around halfway through or so, at the end of spring (couldn't find the final gold piece), so the whole thing should take around 3 hours, possibly less if you persevere.
to be fair, the game is exactly what I thought it would be, at least from a functionality perspective. a mobile game released on pc without any thought put into actual pc functionality. still, there's always hope a mobile dev has played a pc game at some point before making one (or 10) themselves. not these guys, even after all this time. very disappointing overall, if you want to look at pretty pictures, there are far better options.
small consolation that it's not sold for 10-20 bucks but it wouldn't be recommendable even for free in its current state. and weirdly enough, I found a trailer for it from 2020 but mobile versions got released at the same (march 2024), so they had plenty of time to do better, they simply chose not to.
33 found helpful
Steam ↗
