Return of Red Riding Hood Enhanced Edition Review

Who needs that old tale of Red Riding Hood? You’ll like my retellings better I promise!

Who doesn’t know the classic story of Little Red Riding Hood? As the years past, we see many retellings of this story that range from many genres. Many books retelling the story exist compared to the small amount of games I’ve seen that exist out there. With this retelling, well, it is literally framed as one. As an older brother, you are tasked to tucking your little sister in bed. Before you leave, she asks to read her the story of Red Riding Hood. However, you decide to recite the story by memory as the book still sits on her bookshelf.

This is half point and click (well clicking highlighted text for the most part) and half visual novel, though both don’t necessarily occupy the same space. The first half has the point and click aspects as we can search in and around the house for what Red’s mother needs, which is pastry filling. All you have to do is find a filing you can use and get a complimentary spice once your mother deems it perfect. Be careful though, as you can only choose one filling per playthrough out of the five that are available. You just have to do this at least once, so if you end up not liking it you can easily choose to skip it.

Once you choose which filling you want, and the pastries are all already to eat, this is where the visual novel half comes in. You have a choice between either having Red’s mother or Red deliver the pastries to the Grandmother. Finally started the journey through the woods through the eyes of either character and of course, who will encounter the wolf. After this choice, there are several other choices, depending on your previous two, and you have the story. The good thing about this is that you can easily get back to this to replay the other choices, as even if you choose to gather the ingredients yourself the game remembers it.

Each full story varies in length as some will be shorter than others, but they all are not devoid of being hilarious. Either by the image that accompanies the text or what the text describes. And possibly the best decision that could have been made is that none of the longer ones drag on too long nor do they kick the joke till it just becomes annoying as each path doesn’t repeat the same joke even if they have the same root (like the mushroom pastry path).

The artwork and models are not, well, as great as they could be (as you can probably tell from screenshots). Heck, Red Riding Hood has a hat rather than a riding cape. Though in turn this does add the how hilarious it is at points. Like how the wolf will look or the expressions Red, the Mother, or the Grandmother will don.

Verdict

Return of Red Riding Hood was one of those games that I just wanted because of the screenshots I saw. I can honestly say that I was not disappointed. I wouldn’t say this is a great game, but this isn’t a horrible one. It does feel like someone that doesn’t want to read from the book, or want to put a new spin on it, would say and framing it like this, rather than something more serious, was a good choice. It is an entertaining title that will undoubtedly cause at least some chuckles and if you don’t mind this, totally go for this.