Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood

I have a soft spot for studios that carve out a visual signature so distinct you can recognise their work from a single screenshot. Devespresso Games is exactly that kind of studio, and Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood is their most confident and accessible expression of it yet. Scarlet, vocalist of the indie band Foxtrot Bop, gets tornado-flung into the realm of Glome, inherits the mantle of the Ruby Witch (red hood, Wompin' Stick, and one ruby heel), and promptly discovers that the Black Witch LeFaba is going to kill her and her Munchkin companions every single day until she figures out a better plan. The time-loop, called the recursion hex in-game, is not just window dressing. It is the mechanical spine of the whole experience. At its core this is a 2D side-scrolling puzzle-adventure, and the puzzle design is where the game justifiably earns its reputation. Each chapter of Glome is a contained environment, and inside it you will hunt for items, read environmental clues, solve pattern-matching and logic puzzles to open rune doors, and occasionally get ambushed by flying Dodobos or a poison dart from a Monkeyta in the trees. Your hearts whittle down, your stamina bar drains when you run or dodge, and consumables heal wounds or afflictions you pick up along the way. A travelling merchant accompanies your troupe and can restock you in a pinch. The standout threat is the Brer Wolf, LeFaba's familiar, who tracks Scarlet screen-to-screen and can only be escaped by using a totem transformation spell to hide in plain sight. It adds a genuine pulse-quickening layer to what is otherwise a measured, contemplative puzzle pace. The branching structure is the real draw for completionists. The game has up to ten endings, shaped by which allies you recruit and which puzzles you solve on a given run. Helping the eccentric Punkin Jack recover his essence, building a mechanical heart for the steampunk robot Sir Ulysses Talus, or bolstering the courage of Captain Leopold Goldmane each nudges the story in a different direction. Crucially, not all puzzles can be completed in a single playthrough, because meeting one area's condition locks out the alternatives. Multiple runs are essentially mandatory if you want to see everything, and a smart mid-game save before the Wispy Woods section will spare you repeating the prologue every time. That said, the absence of a dialogue skip button becomes genuinely painful by the fourth or fifth run. The art deserves its own paragraph. The manhwa-influenced hand-drawn style, lush layered backgrounds, and a jazzy score that shifts from breezy to tense with quiet precision make this one of the prettier small-studio games you will find on PC. Character portraits are expressive, environments shift from sun-dappled forest clearings to desolate snowy ruins with real craft behind each transition. Some puzzles do tip into the esoteric side, where the solution feels more like trial-and-error than earned insight, and early builds carried crash issues on scene loads though patches addressed the worst of it. The action-evasion elements may surprise players expecting a pure point-and-click experience, and the timed rune-door sequences in later chapters can feel unduly rushed. For anyone who gravitates toward story-rich adventure games with a strong visual identity, a Southern-charm-meets-fairy-tale tone, and the patience for multiple playthroughs, Scarlet Hood and the Wicked Wood delivers something genuinely handcrafted and warm. It knows what it wants to be, and mostly gets there.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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