Fox n Forests arrived in May 2018 promising a return to the 16-bit era, and it delivers that promise with a magic crossbow in hand. German studio Bonus Level Entertainment built a side-scrolling platformer for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac and Linux, published by EuroVideo Medien. You play Rick, a fox who can flip the season under his feet mid-level. The trick works. The rest of the game works less often.
Trailer, via Bonus Level Entertainment.
Rick the Fox and the Stolen Bark
The setup is a fable. An evil force is meddling with the seasons in the mana woodlands, building an army of tree-like creatures and half-plant, half-animal mutants, and scheming to introduce a deadly fifth time of year. Rick, a mischievous fox, plays a trick on a bird. That bird, Patty the Partridge, escorts him to the old Season Tree, which tasks him with recovering stolen bark to restore balance to the forest. Patty promises gold and the crossbow. Rick’s private plan is to take both and then swallow the bird.
That is a fine, mean little joke, and it gives Rick more character than most retro heroes get. The game is inspired by Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Wonder Boy in Monster World, ActRaiser 2, and the Castlevania and Zelda series. You can feel all of it.
Switching Seasons With a Crossbow
The crossbow is the whole design. It fires at range, slashes up close, and switches between two seasons per level. Change the season and the level changes with it: new platforms, new routes, new secrets. Magic drains as you do it. The game pitches pixel perfect platforming, and the pitch is easy to learn, difficult to master.
That is the honest description. The season switch is a real mechanic, not a costume. It turns one screen into two, and it makes backtracking worthwhile rather than tedious. Fox n Forests also stacks on screen-filling bosses, bonus levels, potions, loot, shops and upgradeable shots. Five seasons, not four, are in there to explore.
Easy to learn, difficult to master, impossible to not fall in love with!
The claim is the game’s own, and it oversells. Five seasons sounds generous until you count how much of the game leans on the same two-season puzzle in a new coat. The 16-bit pixel art is sharp and the chip tunes soundtrack is catchy, but charm is doing heavy lifting where invention should be.
Where Fox n Forests Stumbles
The problems are ordinary. A retro platformer lives or dies on whether its difficulty curve teaches or punishes, and Fox n Forests too often picks the second. The season mechanic demands quick, precise swaps, and the game is happy to punish a mistimed one with a death and a restart. Skill tests stop feeling like tests and start feeling like tolls.
The structure has the same issue. Shops, loot and potions suggest an adventure with room to grow, but the progression is thin, and the backtracking the game advertises as clever is mostly a matter of remembering which season opens which wall. The bosses are large and loud. They are not, for the most part, interesting.
None of this is fatal. The core loop is sound, the art holds up, and the humor lands more often than it misses. Rick is a good protagonist precisely because he is not noble. A fox who intends to rob his own quest-giver is a better hook than another silent knight.
A Worthy Revival, With Caveats
Fox n Forests is a competent revival of the Golden Age, not a great one. It understands what made 16-bit platformers work, and it reproduces the surface of those games with real care. What it does not do is find the new idea underneath. The season switch is the one genuinely fresh thing here, and the game spends it early.
The published critical aggregate sits at 6.9 out of 10 across six outlets. That number is fair. Fox n Forests is a game worth playing if you grew up on this era and want a sharp, short reminder of why. It is not a game that will convert anyone who did not.
Six point nine out of ten.
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