This game is insane. It's playful and funny and beautiful on one hand, but on the other one it's a hardore platformer that will cause you to lose all your hair and smash your keyboard. So why get it? It has great music and visuals. It's entertaining and funny. It is a challenge to finish it. There's a simple story with which most of us can relate ("They stole our booze!"). If you're a man (or a woman) ready for a frustrating, but rewarding gaming challenge, get it.

I tried giving this game an honest chance, but it wouldn't let me: the controls are plain terrible. :-(


Let's start on the positive side: the visuals and the music is great. Nothing less than AAA-quality there. But you already knew that, as the trailer and pictures already gave that away.

What those trailers don't mention, though, is the sluggish controls you get. Your basic attack barely reaches in front of you, so before you finish the first level you'll be "axe-slamming" into enemies (jump, then down+attack). This is furthered by the notion that most enemies need multiple hits, so directly attacking is stupid even if you time it directly (there is no such thing as stun, so before you button mashed the attack button enough times, you'll more than likely have traded a hit or two).
Then there is the sling attack, which can not only not be aimed but seems to go pretty much everywhere EXCEPT where you want it. Hitting bats with it is more a matter of luck than anything else. And I bet even the most veteran platform player will have died multiple times because grappling to the ceiling required wonky timing.
Sometimes you get bombs or shuriken, but these are a gimmick. They are just as hard to aim and barely do any damage.

Platformers aren't known for their story-telling aspect, but even here it manages to score below-average. There's this dark ship that comes to your village and steals bottles of...what, exactly? No idea. It's your job to get it back. Those bottles (sake, perhaps?) are in the level as coins, but don't provide any bonus. Neither does killing enemies.
And it assumes the suspension of disbelief a bit too fast. Why are most enemies shadow based? Why are you in a submarine for one level? Why are you made out of wood? And most of all: why can't I use the Kratos-like grappling axe to throw it into enemies directly?

The bad part is that this game has quite some potential it throws away (okay, mainly the controls is to blame). The game looks great and the music is fantastic. In that regards, it really should appeal to those who like 2.5D platformers in the vein of Donkey Kong Country or Giana sisters. But those games are great because they have smooth controls, and ramp up the difficulty with harder courses and enemy placement. Here, you're more struggling with the controls than with the level itself.

Beautiful design, great levels, colorful, really smooth gameplay and nice controls. I only don't like the fighting system very much, but that is no big problem, at least not for me. I enjoy every second of this game.

Title: Wooden Sen'SeY
Developer: Upper Byte
Publisher: Neko Entertainment
Genre: Platformer

Wooden Sen'SeY is a 3D platformer with obvious Japanese influences from the audiovisual perspective. Since there aren’t very games in this genre to tackle the subject with a touch of Asia in the mix, I appreciated the diversity and especially the sounds. Most platformers neglect the the soundtrack in favor of frenetic action or anything else for that matter. But not Wooden Sen'SeY, which does a great job at providing a fun, albeit short experience that feels like a breath of fresh air for this particular gaming genre. Apart from its small number of individual levels (only 9) the other noticeable flaw for this game, has to be the somewhat sluggish combat at times. The title is still reasonably priced for what it offers and it includes both Trading Cards and Achievements.

+ Pleasant art stye and soundtrack.
+ Steam Trading Cards & Achievements.

- Combat glitches and some late-game difficulty spikes.
- Short length, even for a platformer.

Rating 7/10

This review was submitted for SUPER Giveaways and Kool Kids Klub.

This game is bad. The platforming is bland and the combat stinks. The presentation is super generic too.

As a platformer this game is mediocre at best and pretty bad at its worst. It is super floaty and the grappling move you can do is super clunky. The game is so short and flys by so quick that you don’y really have time to learn any sorts of nuances this game could possibly offer. All difficulty of this game comes from occasional one-shot kill scenarios. You can get to the final boss with 20-30 lives if you play all the way through.

As a hack-and-slasher this game is bad. The combat never evolves past 3 permanent ways to hurt enemies and there are a couple special items you can get but they aren’t fun at all. Combat really comes down to hitting x three times and then jumping over the enemy and doing a down attack, rinse and repeat. The funnest times I had in this game are when I chose to ignore enemies and continue without fighting them.

The sounds and music scream generic. Nothing is memorable and the graphics aren’t anything special either. If you want to play another platformer look elsewhere.

Controls are sloppy and hitboxes are awful. Has some good things going for it, visuals are cool, setting is neat, music is nice, but I feel like overall it's just not worth the time and money for it just looking nice and not playing nice.

Some dude steals SeY bottles and barrels from the village and you play a cute alcoholic samurai desperately trying to retrieve them.

The gameplay is rather simple: move, jump, attack, grappling hook and some form of "exploding jump" which is the "sauce" of the game. Additionally, you can grab some shurikens or bombs to throw at you enemies. The enemies have also very simple attacking patterns but when different types come mixed together you might need some agility.

There are only 9 Stages, some of which are quite unique. The and the devs explored well the possible combinations of grappling, jumping and exploding jumping with the environment and you get a decent amount of challenge. There is also a time attack mode with 30 short challenges - those might require some thinking ahead!

The achievements add an extra layer to the game: you have 3 accomplishment per stage (collect all SeY bottles, kill all enemies, finish faster than dev's time), plus beating all time attack with gold medals. It was not overly frustrating but actually kinda fun to do them. It reminded me classics like Crash Bandicoot and the Ank time attacks.

Linux port was flawless too, thanks for supporting the penguin.

Wooden Sen'SeY delivers what it promises and gives enough fun for a modest price.

The game tries, but it fails to take it home.

The mechanics (short-ranged combat, swinging with rope-axes, bouncing and platforming) are certainly nothing new, but I did enjoy the mix, it felt good. The controls are not very precise in some aspects, but they're bearable. Art direction is nothing to write home about either, but it works.

Then, you start noticing little bugs, like hit detection on enemies or hit detection on your rope swings.
Then, you start noticing little balancing issues, like ranged enemies that have a high enough fire rate to keep you at bay with knockback and kill you unless you glitch it, or rows of 8+ scarcely dangerous enemies inserted as padding right after a checkpoint. They also begin almost every difficult section with an extra life, showing they have no faith in either the audience or their platforming balancing.

And then, the final boss. The final boss made me throw the towel.
Remember all those tactics you learned through the game? Learn how the enemies move and take them out with your axes... Carefully swing around to get that one item so you can get back to 4 health... Explore the environment looking for secret areas... Good, now forget it.
The final boss is nothing like that. The final boss is a runner with no checkpoints and riddled with insta-kill traps. A section like this (which closely resembles Bit Trip Runner with its timing nature) requires tight controls, something that this game doesn't have, and it especially shows in this final stage.
First, you have 10-15 seconds of running, which is padding. Then you have three sawblades on the floor, as wide as your longest jump, so you have to time it perfectly, and I mean 1-2 frame perfect. You can boost-jump through 2 of these but not all 3, because otherwise you'll be too slow before the boss catches up to you.
Then you have some precision jumping (with insta-kill blades in-between), some precision swings (with death void below), and then god knows what because I gave up after the rope didn't hook to the ceiling for the Nth time even though it should've.
What makes it worse is that you have 4 lives and no extra ones can be found in the level (as far as I could manage to last). This means you get a 15 second cutscene after loading the level, then you can die 4 times; when you do (and you will), you're forced to wait about 10 seconds (loading + death screen), then another 15 seconds for the boss cutscene.

Had it been for the early 8 stages I would've suggested this. Nothing exceptional, but it would've worked ok.
The last boss changed the experience from an unremarkable decent one to a memorably annoying waste of time.

Yes, I'll remember you, Wooden Sen'SeY. Good job.

The conrtols are bonkers! Q for left instead of A. I can't even play this! OMG! Oh wait, I can change them to normal wasd, cool beans this game is awesome!

It's a fun little platformer game really.

8/10

An amateur platformer that often demands more precision than its programming can provide. A lot of unfair insta death and wild goose chases to try to get that 100%. Also one of the many games that has an extra-life system that doesn't serve any purpose. I'll give these guys props for a hookshot that works quite decently though.