Red Riding Hood Review - Screenshot 1 of 2

Clearly aimed at children, Brave Rock Games' Red Riding Hood is a vaguely interactive storybook that, while certainly not a scam at the inexpensive asking price of $1 USD, will take users no more than 15 minutes to play through. With bare-bones presentation, narration that moves at a snail's pace and nearly no player interaction, parents are advised to find more professional children's eBooks on their tablets and smart devices.

In Red Riding Hood, players listen to a slightly muffled narrator tell the familiar story of Little Red Hiding Hood and her journey to her grandmother's house. There are no twists or turns to make the story more interesting, and the characters are all extremely forgettable. There's nothing wrong with children's games that use familiar fairy tales and fables; the old Sierra On-Line graphic adventures told familiar stories but added gameplay elements like puzzles and injected unique personalities into the characters. But Red Riding Hood has none of that. Aside from deciding on which path to take once in a while, the player does nothing but tap the GamePad screen to move to the next screen. Visual novels need to have some kind of unique interactive element or hook; Red Riding Hood doesn't.

Red Riding Hood Review - Screenshot 2 of 2

The lack of personality and gameplay might be excusable if the game looked or sounded great, but unfortunately Red Riding Hood is as generic as it is boring. Large cartoon characters appear over still photographs, with no animation or variety. All the characters look like clip-art creations, the music is extremely bland, and the narrator - who narrates the voice of every single character - is a little too quiet and occasionally muffled. The few sound effects that appear are completely unnecessary and do nothing to immerse the player. The text on the screen is small, so parents will unfortunately want to turn up the volume to hear the narrator, and one might expect some kind of educational element, this being a children's game, but there's no learning to be found here other than the built-in cautionary tale of talking to strangers.

Conclusion

There's really not much to say about Red Riding Hood, other than that there are many better options for parents out there to keep their kids entertained. With a length shorter than a children's television show and production values that would be found in a free browser game, it's impossible to recommend Red Riding Hood.