Woven Review

Games like Yoshi’s Woolly World, Crafted World, and LittleBigPlanet have created colorful, kid friendly worlds that also appeal to some adults. So of course there would be others that wish to do games that would have similar bright and colorful worlds. Woven for the Nintendo Switch is such a game. But is it a good game?

Woven isn’t a game for little kids. Its graphics and its rhyming  narrator make it look like a game for kids but its gameplay is too complex and actually a bit boring.

The narrator of Woven is your constant companion along with with a tiny flying machine. The voice acting and dialogue given to the narrator seems like its directed toward a child. Its not horrible dialogue and it is kind of neat and fits the graphics.

As for the gameplay, it uses the analog sticks to direct actions to your flying companion and to your woven elephant. It seems doubtful that a young child would be able to navigate the controls and especially use them successfully in the puzzles. The controls too stiff and too complex. The elephant walks awkwardly toward the puzzles.

Puzzle wise, not much direction is given to the player as to how to solve puzzles. The player really doesn’t even know where they are supposed to go. The characters of Woven find themselves wandering around an environment  that seems as hand knitted as the game’s main character, though both are as uninteresting as the gameplay.

Woven’s graphics should be a plus but they seem thrown together and ugly, especially compared to a game like Yoshi’s Woolly World!

Woven just isn’t a good game, though its nowhere close to the worse game we’ve played. It wants to be artistic and appeal to a young audience, but ugly graphics and stiff, complex controls hold it back. This is a very uninteresting game. Its unclear who Woven is meant for.

Woven gets a 5.0 out of 10.

Thanks to PR Hound for providing a digital code for this review. Woven will be available on the Nintendo Switch eshop tomorrow.