Wooden Sen’Sey

Game Info

Wooden Sen’Sey from Upper Byte Studios and Neko Entertainment has been on my radar for quite sometime, being that I am a huge fan of 2D style platformers.  Since it was announced well over a year ago I have followed closely and was super stoked when it fell on my plate to review.

Wooden Sen’Sey follows a village chief named Goro (No, not the guy with 4-arms from Mortal Kombat) who’s village gets attacked and he must embark on a journey for vengeance. Across the adventure, each level mixes up the action with different control mechanics being introduced.  The first level of course is your tutorial level but after this easy affair, the difficulty ramps up and new and challenging segments are established.  There are two levels that stuck out to me that you can see the inspiration that the team got from Donkey Kong Country.  The first was the Submarine level and the second was the silhouette level.  Both were excellent in terms of design and was a cool shout out to one of my favorite franchises.

The controls are pretty tight on the game and feel good with the way Upper Byte implemented the “double jump” action.  Instead of pressing the jump button twice, in middle jump you almost to a Duck Tales-style pogo jump by thrusting your chain axe downwards.  It feels fresh and innovative the way the platforming is revolved around the axe,  even using it to attach to ceilings and swinging later on.  The combat is kind of bland, as most enemies don’t really fight back but instead have spike armor that you have to destroy with your axe before plummeting them to death.  The underwater area has more of a combat challenge for gamers that prefer combat to platforming.

The action gets a toss up later on as you get weapons such as the ninja star to add to your arsenal.  This will no doubt help you to defeat enemies with greater ease.  One complaint I did have with the controls though were the motion/tilt controls while swinging.  I would have rather had just used the analog stick to swing left or right.  Another minor complaint was that the game was too short, finishing up after 9 levels.  You can unlock a time trials mode for each level and also try to kill all the baddies and collect all the little rock looking things to earn Master status in each level.

Graphically, Wooden Sen’Sey shines right along side other next-gen games such as Trine 2 and Armillo.  The graphic style really reminds me heavily of Donkey Kong Country, which is amazing for a budget title.  Each level mixes it up as well using different graphic techniques, which really helps the appeal of playing something new each time.  The soundtrack has some killer metal/asian sounding themes.  These tracks were also fun and had me looking forward to what was coming next in each area.

The Recommendation

Even with all the great 2D platforming titles to hit the Nintendo Wii U within the last 6 months, I can still easily recommend Wooden Sen’Sey.  At $10, even though it doesn’t do anything groundbreaking in the genre, you will still find enough in the package to make it worth taking Goro on his trail of vengeance.  Let the indie revolution continue!