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Casual Friday

The above image is from Rite of Passage - Child of the Forest. It’s the first game in a series that now totals five games. I think the consensus is that this game is the best. I’ve played the second game, Rite of Passage - The Perfect Show, and thought it, too, was quite good. Although it had a few more hidden object screens than Child of the Forest. I’ve also played the most recent game, Rite of Passage - Heart of the Storm. Save your money!

The male children of the town, Willow Ridge, must go through a ritual as part of their transition to manhood. The ritual involves entering the forest to gather what is necessary to plant a specific type of tree. It’s Ethan’s turn to enter the forest. The problem is that Ethan is afraid of the dark. He enters the forest, but does not return.

In an interesting twist on the Romulus and Remus legend, instead of being adopted by a wolf or some other creature, Ethan has been adopted by the forest, itself. Ethan’s sister also enters the forest in search of her brother, and also doesn’t return. But not because she, too, becomes lost, Because she doesn’t. Rather she finds her brother and learns the reason why Ethan didn’t return that night. The result is that she decides to use the power of the forest to avenge her brother’s treatment.

You are the protagonist who is charged with making things right. However, you are not doing this out of the goodness of your heart. You are doing it because your husband, as a boy, was the one who was mostly to blame for for Ethan’s current situation.

And he has also entered the forest, supposedly to atone for his past failings, but also for reasons you should discover for yourself.

One delightful thing in this game is the way the backstory is relayed to the player. The backstory is told in a series of graphic novel-like illustrations. Each series consists of four panels, two of which are easy, but entertaining mini-games. You find out-of-place objects and place them correctly. Each placed object earns you another piece of narrative story. This same type of story telling takes place in The Perfect Show. I don’t know about the two following games, but this little delight was abandoned by game five. Maybe the developers thought this was too hokey. They were wrong. While I normally only show one scene, below is a shot from one of the pages.

The game is from Mad Head Games. I mention that only because I think they were doing really good stuff in the 2011-2013 time period. But then something changed. I don’t have any idea what it was, but I don’t think their work of late holds up the their earlier standards.

I liked Nevertales: Legends, Beyond - Light Advent and to a lesser degree Maze: Subject 360. I didn’t care for the Cadenza games or the latest Right of Passage. There are a few more in their catalog that I haven’t played.

I don’t know the exact release dates, but perhaps that’s not material. Maybe I should have said the releases have been hit or miss. Regardless of the phrasing, it is, after all, only my opinion. Others might think that the recent iterations of Right of Passage are superior to the first two.

From what I’ve seen, it is a console game. No clue as to what console it plays on. (Since I own no consoles, it matters little to me.) Some of the screenshots remind me of Calavera.