Timberman Review

Have you ever wanted to play an extremely powerful timberman that continuously tries to chop down an infinitely tall tree, all the while inviting several of his friends such as Hulk, Geralt of Rivia, and Flappy Bird to continue chopping down at the tree? Me neither, but that's exactly what Timberman is all about.

The first time I launched Timberman I thought I'd play for a couple of rounds, maybe finish some of the achievements and then move on. Much to my surprise, however, I ended up spending 16 hours playing.

Timberman will only be as good as you allow it to be. It's a simple game, with no story or characters to love. But in part, that is what the game its charm. Since I entered expecting a simple and repetitive game, I received exactly what I was hoping for, and more.

Apart from chopping wood at aggressively fast paces, Timberman offers the player a lot of things to unlock. These characters can be unlocked by accomplishing certain tasks, such as playing the game and receiving a certain score, or chopping a specific total of wood. The most challenging character to obtain, for instance, is Gaben. To unlock Gaben, players will need to score 2,000, or chop a total of 999,999 wood total. As a reference, after playing 16 hours, my best score is 1,197 and I have chopped a total of 51,522 wood.

The game gives you a lot of incentive to continue playing through the unlockable characters. It causes a strange euphoria to finally unlock that character you were farming for and be able to start chopping wood with them.. And although the game isn't a graphical marvel, there is bound to be a character for just about anyone. My personal favourites are either Sir Tim, Lazy Bird, or Timber Chick.

The gameplay is deceptively simple. Timberman has players tapping either the left and right arrows, A and D, or the right and left mouse clicks, and with each wood chopped it lowers the branches that fall from above. The player has to click right or left according to what comes next in order to not get hit by the branches and as an incentive to go quickly, there is a timer that slowly reduces or rises according to how quickly the player chops the tree. The timer then gets quicker with each "level" which happens with every 20 branches chopped.

The mixture of increasingly fast facile, while trying not to get hit makes for an addicting gameplay loop of rounds that only last a couple of minutes at a time, which is how eventually players such as myself end up spending several hours just chopping away. 

I was shocked to find out that Timberman has multiplayer; either local or co-op, as up to eight players can battle it out to see who lasts the longest or chops the fastest. It makes for very interesting rounds and playstyles in which you'll see some players trying to win by being the fastest, while others do their best to survive through endurance.

These multiplayer rounds can be exhilarating and difficult, however, the biggest downfall comes from the lack of player base. Although rounds aren't difficult to stumble upon, the harder task is finding fair ones. I have a skill of 700, and I was getting matched against players within the 300–400 range, which made my rounds extremely easy and theirs possibly very hard. At the other end of the spectrum, once I faced a player with 900 skill and got decimated.

One of the nicest things about Timberman's multiplayer is that it has a system where you can be playing your single-player rounds, and once you finish, it will tell you if it found any multiplayer lobbies to join. It makes finding a lobby easy, while also allowing you to practice and just get in some fun rounds beforehand, in contrast to just creating a lobby and sitting down waiting for someone to join.

However, for a silly game about aggressively chopping wood, it's quite a surprise that there are any players left at all for the multiplayer six years after its release, especially with its current 24-hour peak on steammdb.info being 101.

The audio design could definitely use some improvements, although, a quick muting of the audio allows for choosing your own music to aggressively chop wood to. It is important to note, however, that the sound of the chopping wood might be helpful at keeping a steady and rhythmic pace of chopping that will ensure higher scores. 

Deceptively simple, quick rounds, and surprisingly fun and active multiplayer truly makes Timberman really easy to suggest to anyone due to its affordable price. Even 30 minutes of your time will be worth it, and I can assure you that it will never be that short.