A name like Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood is sure to conjure thoughts of the classic fairy tale it obviously draws its name from. You’d be more accurate in calling it a thinly veiled retelling of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz though. Unlike the beloved children’s story, however, Scarlet Hood is a shallow experience that misses the point of what came before it.
Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood
Developer: Devespresso
Price: $15
Platform: PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a Steam code for review
If you’ve ever played Devespresso’s other games, The Coma: Cutting Class and its sequel, then you already know what to expect gameplay-wise. Players control Scarlet, a southern gal with dreams of superstardom, across the fantastical two-dimensional landscape of Glome, dodging flying monkeys and solving obtuse puzzles. I say obtuse because as of this writing, I still have no idea how I was meant to solve one puzzle. A different puzzle I was also stuck on came with an incorrect solution from a guide provided by the developers. There’s even an omnipresent lurking enemy in the Brer Wolf, the main antagonist’s familiar, which Scarlet must hide from every time it rears its ugly head. The forest the game takes place in is also loaded with consumable items and currency you’ll probably never use.
Devespresso added a few elements to Scarlet Hood that, to some, might make it feel like a different game. Being a witch, Scarlet has a sixth sense that can help her solve puzzles and get rid of enemies along her path. The atmosphere is also that of a lighthearted fairy tale rather than a Korean horror story. These traits fail to set Scarlet Hood apart from Devespresso’s prior work, however, and it’s impossible to take a step forward without noticing how derivative it is.
Scarlet Hood’s story isn’t doing it much justice either. It’s a constant and blunt reminder of an infinitely better story in the early 20th-century novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a copy and paste job, but the elements in Scarlet Hood are sometimes a bit too precise.
Narratively, it stands taller than its gameplay, but that isn’t saying a lot. It differentiates itself just enough to not be a facsimile: There’s a looping timeline holding Scarlet Hood’s premise together, for example, and Scarlet is more of a figure in her story than Dorothy was in the first Oz. It also lacks any meaningful allegory whatsoever, extinguishing any flame it may have held over Baum’s original creation, which served as a metaphor for late 19th-century political economics.
I make an effort to evaluate a game without comparing it against other media outside itself. It’s fun to see and discuss where a game pulls its influence from, but it’s rare that I let it affect the final word so much. Scarlet Hood, however, is a constant reminder of other media that did it better. It’s an injustice to Devespresso’s prior work, and it’s disingenuous to the original story it’s trying to emulate.
The Final Word
A lacking homage to decidedly better content.
– MonsterVine Rating: 2.5 out of 5 – Mediocre
