I reckon few people nowadays aspire to or fantasize about how it would have been to occupy the position of village chief back in the day when village chiefs were a more common thing. While the quantity of paperwork to be dealt with would be a debatable subject, having to pick up your two axes and run around slicing silly looking monsters when your village becomes the target of one unfortunate event or another, must have been somewhat of a chore. Following Goro in Upper Byte’s Wooden Sen’Sey proves just how much of a chore it was.

This screenshot might give away the Japanese setting

This colorful 2.5D action-platformer throws you right into the green forests surrounding your village as you set on your quest to get revenge. After a quick tutorial, delivered through a small number of images placed in the background, you get to unleash Goro’s full set of abilities upon the unexpecting hammer, dagger, sword-wielding or just-sitting-there blobs that will be present throughout the levels.

Goro can swing his axes in order to cut enemies into tiny little pieces, as well as use them as a jump-enhancing tool and a grappling hook. Add the capability of throwing various projectiles you find around the levels and you practically know everything the protagonist can do. While a huge number of abilities don’t guarantee flawless gameplay, it feels like the village chief in question could have used some further knowledge in the art of running around and hitting things in the head.

One of the more colorful levels

While technically the graphics aren’t quite something that make the game stand out, artistically, Upper Byte have managed to at least get the notion of variety right. Every other level comes with a new setting and while you probably won’t love all of them, there’s at least one or two that will please your eyes.

Most of the problems the game has come from the gameplay department. In theory, if one’s to judge by the Steam page, the title wants to provide old-school gameplay. Older platformers were no strangers to the concept of challenge but Wooden Sen’Sey has a few consistency issues. The level design itself is very run-of-the-mill, having most of the obstacles seen before in every platformer that came out before it. You’ll have enemies that block your path and others that try to kill you. There will be giant axes, platforms that ascend and descend at a steady pace, holes in which to fall to a very unimpressive death. Goro can get hit around four times, unless he’s dealing with an insta-kill type of enemy or trap and can collect hearts or lives (which, as expected represent the number of times you can retry the level before having to replay it in its entirety) from various locations in the actual world.

Village chief in the skies

As you go through these levels, which, in theory shouldn’t be that long, you’ll reach one, or perhaps two spots that will be causes of great amounts of frustration as you’ll die repeatedly while trying to get past them. The issue here is divided into two parts. Firstly, these moments occur in every level and the checkpoint system almost always tends to have you return to them more often than you should, sometimes due to an accidental death right before the next checkpoint marker. Furthermore, at times, you can even find lives present right next to these sections, as if someone was aware that if you fail them until you run out of lives, you might not feel inclined to go back to attempting to beat them later. 

Secondly, it is to be noted that these section aren’t hard to overcome because of crazy placement of traps, as is the case in titles like Super Meat Boy, or because they want to push you towards experimentation, as much as due to the fact that the controls are fiddly and unpredictable. The frustration tied to these moments is also amplified by the fact that they are usually preceded by sections that show no actual intention of making things hard. The 2.5D perspective tends to mess things up as well in certain places, such as one level in a dungeon, when Goro has to avoid spears coming out of the wall. The problem is that, coming from the background towards the foreground it’s hard to figure out when it will actually affect you.

Unpredictable spears

Lastly, the game shouldn’t be particularly long, consisting of only nine levels that aren’t that large, plus an added time attack mode. The developer times you’re challenged to beat, hang around slightly over the three minute mark, however, the time you’ll spend in the game will be artificially lengthened by the inevitable retries that will most likely occur.

The other aspects of Wooden Sen’Sey, are also rather common. Animations could have been a bit smoother and in higher number when it comes to the protagonist, but I guess that keeping the title in mind it’s somewhat justified. The sound is decent and the music that comes with the game fits it like a regular black glove would fit a hand. It’s there, it will probably keep some of the cold at bay, but nobody will look at it and express their marvel.

Cone-shaped hats and elevator music

Wooden Sen’Sey is Upper Byte’s first effort which clearly came out at the wrong time. The aforementioned consistency issues, coupled with the fact that it just emulates concepts already present in a large number of platformers that came out beforehand, without having anything at all to be regarded as its own, unfortunately, make this particular platformer an experience you’re bound to forget right after you’ve finished playing through it. And given the current context, where platformers are encountered as often as ants in an ant farm, you can find much better titles at much smaller prices out there.

MateÈ™ Bogdan Robert, NoobFeed
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