Trying to mix up the formula.

You know, I couldn’t tell you how many games I have played with the same basic premise of Mable and the Wood. Of course, the term “Metroidvania” pops up all the time, but what Mable and the Wood tries to do is change up the actual action involved and for the most part, it succeeds, but there are a few drawback to this neat little game.

Players control Mable, a resurrected child that is armed with a large heavy sword that she can obviously not wield properly. She is simply tasked with stopping the evil forces and the story doesn’t really ever try to get in the way of the game. Perhaps that’s a good thing. Either way, players must navigate Mable through different areas to take down powerful bosses to then take their powers. This is where the changes come into play.

Platforms: PC, Switch, XB1
MSRP: $14.99
Price I’d pay: $10

Since Mable in human form can’t really run, jump, or do much of anything while carrying her sword, she uses magic to transform into different versions to attack and traverse the environment, like a fairy form. She drops her sword, turns into a fairy that can fly and then can recall her sword to turn herself back into a human. Whatever the sword flies into will damage enemies. Keep in mind, using forms will drain her magic bar, and once drained she turns back into a human and falls to the ground. Touching solid ground automatically refills the magic bar. There are even more forms to get from boss kills, like the stone form that can be used to bash through walls or the spider form that allows Mable to swing large gaps and destroy thorn barriers. These can all be switched on the fly using the right analog stick, and many will be mandatory for proper traversal since the human form is pretty much useless.

The checkpoints are decently spread evenly so I never felt like I lost much progress when I died, and when I died I could go back to my body to get the currency I lost, but only once. If I died before getting back to my corpse, I lost all of it, but that never really bothered me much.

According to the developers, players can go through the entire game without killing anything, including bosses, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure it out. So, I killed everything in my path just like I do in almost every video game, and that was completely fine.

What really brings the experience down some are the glitches and the fact that a proper map wasn’t readily available. Most times I just didn’t have a map, but the maps I did have didn’t actually show me where I was and so I just had to figure it out. It’s no surprise, I found myself lost a few times in the world not knowing where to go next or what I may have missed. As far as glitches go, I found myself stuck in a wall a few times as well as when I died, my body would be in an area I couldn’t reach or was just straight up in a wall somewhere where no one outside of a ghost could get to it.

The music and look of the game are very well done. It has a minimalist look to it that was always very pretty to see in action, and the music was catchy enough for me to hum along when I was in an area for a long time.

In the end, Mable and the Wood isn’t a bad game. It takes a familiar concept and throws in something different with combat and traversal, and it works for the most part. I just think some of the execution and sense of direction was handled poorly. I almost expected after beating a boss that I would have to spend 20 minutes trying to figure out where to go next after getting a new form to use, and that’s not ideal. People looking for something different will find it here, just know that it comes with some issues, but altogether, it is a decent experience.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.