Woodle Tree 2: Worlds Review

Successful 3D character platformers need three things: likeable or relatable characters, good level design and tight controls. Woodle Tree 2: Worlds has none of those things, and builds on the reputation of the original to be a wholly disappointing experience.

You play as what I think is a square acorn carrying a leaf, and you have to jump around a series of coloured blocks collecting fruit for reasons that aren’t explained. The acorn makes little squeaking noises occasionally, but past that it has no real character. There is no indication of any character traits and this makes Woodle Tree 2 really rather bland to play. I have no attachment to this character or this world.

The world itself is a bit of a mess: a series of different-coloured blocks stacked on top of each other poorly. I found it possible to attach myself to places where two blocks joined to climb to places I wasn’t supposed to be. There are some little creatures that occupy this world, and some of them are aggressive, though this can be very hit-and-miss as to what will actually kill you as there is no feedback as to when you’ve been hit or how much damage you can actually take.

There is a distinct lack of information given to the player in Woodle Tree 2 which makes the platforming very underwhelming. Most of the game’s mechanics are tutorialised by images set into the walls of the world near where they might be useful, but often much after they would first be useful. The jump tutorial is shown after the first set of jumps!

Jumping is very inconsistent, with the distance covered varying wildly. There is a glide mechanic to help you travel further, but often further isn’t the problem and it’s the shorter jumps that provide issues. I would usually look to the shadow of the character to know where I was jumping, but you have very little control over where you’re going and the camera controls are so bad being able to see the shadow consistently would be a miracle.

None of this is helped by the technical problems Woodle Tree 2 has. For a game that wouldn’t look amiss among Nintendo 64 titles, it cannot hold a consistent framerate. In the menu there are three presets but changing between them doesn’t seem to do anything at all, and the game will happily drop to one or two frames per second every few minutes. It also seems to be able to overrule controller settings, as it ignored my Steam controller’s rebindable key options to keep the menu on the A button, despite the in-game prompts suggesting that this was jump.

Woodle Tree 2: Worlds is not very good, and while my experience with it was marred by the technical issues present I doubt it would be much better if it did run well. The game is boring: there’s nothing to draw you in to keep playing it, and for the most part it was making me want to not play it. The one thing it does do well is live up to its predecessor’s legacy of being a difficult to control technical mess, though that won’t help it sell many copies.