Little Red Hood

Little Red Hood is an apparently uniquely awful game for the NES. I'd heard about its general terribleness from a number of different sources, but now there's a handy Angry Video Game Nerd video that sums up the game's flaws nicely.

Warning: this video contains strong language.

Video Games | ScrewAttack | Angry Video Game Nerd: Little Red Hood

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Gretel and Hansel

Gretel and Hansel is a short point-and-click adventure game in which you take on the role of Gretel on her quick search for stones she may use to mark a path through the forest, so that she will not be stranded once her parents lose her there.

Makopudding's game takes place in a grim watercolour world and also features a neat example of player goals and player-character goals being drastically at odds: the player is actually rewarded for finding all of the different ways one can make the protagonist die a horrible, violent death!

The game's author also promises that further episodes in the series are forthcoming and shall - of course - feature Gretel and Hansel in the forest and at the famous witch's house.

Warning: this game does contain bloody violence.

Run Baby Run

There's certainly a LRRH vibe to Run Baby Run, what with it's focus on wolves chasing red-clad girls through the woods. Enjoy this sweet Pacman-esque game from redflash121.

Chibi Fairy Tale Spot 5

Here's another fairytale-themed spot-the-difference game: Chibi Fairy Tale Spot 5, starring ultra-cutesy versions of various classic fairy tale characters and with art by the fabulous Kinkei.

WereSonAmy - Little Red Riding Hood by Loor101

This fan-made video by Loor101 features a whole host of images and video clips that present Sonic the Hedgehog (in werewolf form) and his occasional love interest Amy Rose as the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood. (There's also a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast in there too). I must say that this is some pretty niche 'shipping.

Overlord: Dark Legend

One of the levels of the Overlord: Dark Legend is based on none other than the story of Little Red Riding Hood. I have to be honest though, she doesn't come across particularly well in this version.

Little Red Riding Hood: A Post Apocalyptic Adventure

Little Red Riding Hood: A Post Apocalyptic Adventure is a fab spot-the-difference game from differencegames.com, featuring a new setting for the familiar tale and some neat manga-style artwork from Griffinfly.

Gregory Weir's Silent Conversation

The fairytale connection here is rather dubious, although Carrol's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is one of the featured texts, but I just simply had to link to Gregory Weir's Silent Conversation: a gaming/reading experience that, as the people at Jayisgames point out, neatly plays with the idea of a piece of writing as something where "the author provides the words as your footing, and you respond by touching each of them." Silent Conversation is essentially a classic platform game, where the story naturally progresses as you pass from left to right, except here the levels are literally (as it were) made up of the words of the story that you are experiencing. In the H. P. Lovecraft tale the words "the moon" hang in the middle of the sky of twilight-coloured letters and in Alice the rabbit hole the heroine crawls through is two narrowing lines of text that ultimately come to a tumbling hole of long, thin paragraphs. The words are both the literal text of the story and also the virtual building blocks of the story environment: a kind of concrete poetry mixed with experimental gaming.

Queens

When it comes to trying to describe Noonat's game Queens, I really can't do it more justice than auntie pixelante does in her description:

in most difficult contemporary jumping games, it’s taken for granted that the player will die and try again many times, most likely taking many incarnations to reach the end of the game. in queens, these lives are characters and the repeating cycle of their deaths and replacement is the narrative, suggesting the expendability of women (who are neither faceless nor nameless) to a henry viii-style patriarch.

Alabaster

Now to revisit a genre I don't see often enough on here: interactive fiction. Alabaster is a wonderful piece of IF that places you in the position of the hunter in the tale of Snow White. Like certain other narrative-driven fairytale games before it, Alabaster exploits that fact that there are many different paths that one could take from a story's simple starting point, and there are many endings to discover. Additionally, Alabaster also brings in influences from a wide range of myths and folklore that extend beyond Snow White, including tales of witchcraft, vampires and even apocryphal Judeo-Christian myth (a little hint of Gregory Maguire's Mirror Mirror there, perhaps).

Have fun discovering some weird and wonderful secrets in this really very creepy take on an already rather unsettling tale.

The Path update

The Path has now been released. I would download it immediately and tell you what I think, but I'm currently using my old laptop which apparently doesn't even meet the basic system requirements (grr).

Once Upon a Crime

It already came up in the comments section of a previous post, but I really ought to give another mention to Once Upon a Crime, an old-school point-and-click adventure by Bjorn "Ghost" Ludwig (and thanks again to SSH for pointing this game out to me). In OUaC you play as newly-licenced Private Investigator Little Red Riding Hood who is called upon to solve the recent murder of the Big Bad Wolf (although surely she'd be considered an obvious suspect, no?).

The game is reasonably short (a couple of hours of gameplay, maybe) but has some colourful and charming character designs and a lot of humour, as well as (although I don't want to give too much away) a pretty neat post-modern twist towards the end, which I enjoyed immensely.

OUaC is free to download. Personally, I found a couple of the puzzles a little frustrating, but luckily, there is a guide available.

Incidentally, and this is in no way a slight against OUaC, the fairytale-character-turned-private-investigator subgenre sure is popular, no?

Emerald City Confidential

When it comes to finding a way to describe the overall mise-on-scene of point-and-click-adventure game Emerald City Confidential, I really can't do better than the game's own creator, Dave Gilbert, who calls it "Raymond Chandler meets L. Frank Baum." Emerald City Confidential is a gem of a game that puts a film noir spin on the wonderful world of Oz, coming up with something that's a little Sam Spade, a little Gregory Maguire and with just a hint of Sam & Max (I was right, I really couldn't do better than the game's creator).

ECC is a thoroughly engaging game that's sure to be an especial treat for Oz geeks. For more on this game and its genesis, check out the video below which features an interview with the game's creator (from which I snagged the above quotation).

Yet more 'The Path'

Just an update, the website for the LRRH-themed game The Path (due within a month) is now located at grandmothers-house.net. Just don't stray from the path on your way there, you hear me?

All Roads Lead From Home

It may not be strictly a LRRH game, but there's definitely some familiar themes going on in old favourite auntie pixelante's game All Roads Lead From Home. Just remember: it's dangerous to stray from the path, young child!

The Path

Far and away one of the most interesting LRRH-themed games I've heard about is Tale of Tales' The Path, due for release next year. From the official website:

The Path is a short horror game with a unique form of gameplay, designed to immerse you deeply into the dark themes of its story. Every interaction in the game expresses an aspect of the narrative.

There is one rule in the game. And it needs to be broken.
There is one goal. And when you attain it, you die.

Obviously I can't speak on the quality of the finished product, but based on the concept alone this seems like a fascinating game: a perfect example of form mirroring content. As the title illustrates, the game focuses primarily on what path you take through the forest and what choices you, as Little Red Riding Hood(s) make whilst inside. Video games have a complicated relationship with free will and determinism: the player has the illusion of choice, but is really very constricted by both the limiting path mapped out by the game and by the limited grammar of the game's construction, preventing one from truly doing whatever one wants.

The Path exploits this idea, relating it back to the way in which fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood operate. The game not only reflects events within the classic tale - Red's choice of the path of needles or the path of pins, the way her mother advised or the way the wolf dares her to travel - but also highlights the meta-narrative of the tale, the fact that the Little Red Riding Hood story itself is one that can go through countless differing iterations (multiple paths) but ultimately must follow the same basic structure and come to the same (in the game, fatal) conclusion.

The game further illustrates this theme of the similar-yet-different stories through the multiple takes on Little Red Riding Hood herself. The game does not limit itself by having one protagonist - just as there is not one Little Red Riding Hood - but instead features multiple lead characters who seem to be reflections on one another and also representative of the various different ways of presenting individual versions of the tale, from Robin, the kid-friendly one, to Ruby, the more American McGee-influenced one, to the adult Scarlet, no doubt representing versions of the tale that seem to explore a more adult sensibility.

Even the structure of the game seems based around the notion of retelling; a key feature of any notable fairy tale. The same story is told over and over again and yet never told twice.

What's also interesting is of course the way that this game focuses on the importance of audience interaction. Video games are naturally a medium entirely based around the concept of the player becoming an active participant in a story crafted by someone else, but the same can also be said of the way fairytales are told, either with young children becoming active participants in the storytelling (chiming along with repitions of "what big eyes you have," etc.) or with the fact that tale-hearers ultimately become tale-tellers, and interact with and construct variations on the story themselves. In the game, the player not only constructs their own version of the story (again, within set limits), but their actions also manipulate such things as the ambient music, "mixed in real time through in-game activity."

Really though, I could go on about this game for ages. At first glance you may just brush it off as some kind of Fable clone, but that would be doing this game a great disservice. The Path doesn't just feature differing paths towards the same end, but uses those paths and the nature of the game's own construction to make a point about the very essence of fairy tales and oral folk tales (and video games) and the way the same stories can repeat over and over again, throughout various stages in our lives (represented by the differing ages of the Red Riding Hood characters) without ever becoming truly tired or repetitive. And wow, do I love it when form is married together with content.

I will very much be anticipating this game's release, set for Spring 2009 for Windows. Look forward to an update some time after that.

RIZ-ZOAWD

It's all in Japanese, so it may be of limited use for those of us who don't speak the language, but check out the official website for RIZ-ZOAWD, a new videogame for the Nintendo DS set in the world of Oz. As far as I can ascertain from the website, the game features lots of running around using an ersatz trackball. The character designs are much more interesting than the gameplay, methinks.

MtG: LRRH

A Little Red Riding Hood Magic the Gathering card, from a set of other cards based on this tale that are also part of a larger set of cards based upon fairy tales. Please check out the blog "Mazo de Muchas Cosas" for more.

American McGee's Grimm

American McGee, video game producer and the man behind the wonderfully gothic Alice, is currently in charge of an episodic series of games entitled American McGee's Grimm. The games' premise is a somewhat intriguing one: the player controls "Grimm", a dwarf who must spread a vile and malevolent influence throughout numerous fairytale stories, returning them to their supposedly darker roots, far from the saccharine versions that we know today. The stories range from the well-known, such as Little Red Riding Hood, to certain less famous Grimm brothers tales, such as "The Girl Without Hands".

For more info., and to actually play the games, please check out GameTap's official American McGee's Grimm site.

Zombie BBQ

I feel I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a certain upcoming game for the Nintendo DS, namely: Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ (also starring Momotarō from Japanese folklore).

I really don't know what information I can add that hasn't already been imparted by the title, really. Although I do have to say that this particular rendition of LRRH looks like she owes a debt to Darkstalkers' Bulletta.