Platform games are full of arseholes who wander into forests and steal animals. If they’re not stuffing them into robots, they’re keeping them locked in cages. Therapists would have a field day, digging into why these people need to lock up free-willed animals.
Lila and Flee have encountered one such arsehole, and their Red Wing gang of mini arseholes. This gang have strayed into the Hidden Forest of Solaria (not so hidden, eh?) and have yoinked every bird that they can get hold of, hanging them in gilded cages. Why? Because they didn’t receive enough love when they were growing up.
It’s down to you and Flee, your best friend bird, to get those birds back. And that means platforming with a side order of bottom-bouncing. Across six levels and three boss levels, you will return the birds to their nests and Solaria will be returned to peace.
Oh, we’re doing this already, are we? Yep, you read that right: Lila’s Tale and the Hidden Forest is six levels long, nine if you’re being generous and including the bosses. Those levels are reasonably long, but you could still polish them off in five minutes if you know what you’re doing.
It’s worth getting out of the way early: Lila’s Tale and the Hidden Forest is short. Often that’s fine, especially when games are respectful of your time and deliver a double-concentrate rendition of their game design. But while Lila’s Tale and the Hidden Forest never sticks around long enough to get repetitive, it’s also over before we are really done with it. A devil’s advocate would point to the £4.19 asking price, but we hate devil’s advocates. Lila’s Tale and the Hidden Forest leaves you feeling like you deserve more.
There was enough replayability, and motivation to replay (thank you achievements) for us to play each level twice. That’s thanks to five eggs that are tucked in secret tunnels throughout Lila’s Tale and the Hidden Forest. Lila knows it’s way around a secret, and every stray platform or miscoloured rock will be hiding something. It’s one of Lila’s Tale and the Hidden Forest’s finest points, actually: you can take your time and sweep each level of every egg, every feather (the game’s coins or rings) and get another level of enjoyment out of it.
As a platformer, Lila’s Tale and the Hidden Forest is in the category of ‘competent but unimaginative’. It finds itself in the middle of the Venn diagram between Mario, Sonic and Rayman. Lila can leap and bottom-bounce, while Flee, the bird that follows you, can be used to toss fire-flower-style projectiles at enemies. They home like homing missiles, so the fireballs will follow enemies, no matter where they roam. To balance out how powerful they are, you’re limited by the ammo that you have, which can be replenished at, um, washing lines.
Lila steals a trick from Sonic with Flee. Get hit, and Flee will act like the blue hedgehog’s rings and scatter, leaving you vulnerable without her. Your best option is to leap into her path and recover her, but that’s easier said than done, as she flits around in a panicked figure of eight, often in the path of enemies. If you don’t manage to grab her, she returns to those washing lines and you’re left to backtrack or hope that one is coming up soon.
It’s reminiscent of other games, but it’s sturdy. We had no issues with controls, latency or anything like that. The homing fireballs are a little floaty, as it never feels like you had control over them, but that’s about the worst thing we can say. This is a lean game, but what meat that’s there is tender.
The levels deliver the odd yawn. With only six on offer, Lila’s Tale and the Hidden Forest desperately needed each one to make a case for itself. But the best that it can offer are two flappy bird sections and one magic carpet section. The flappy bird bits, as you tap away on A to keep away from thorns, are so easy that they pass without you barely noticing. The magic carpet section, which gives you more control where you fly, is short, but still manages to grind our gears with its poor feedback about approaching fireballs and bouncing gang members. As the only moments where the gameplay strays from platforming, they’re a little undercooked.
Difficulty was a running conversation that we had while playing Lila’s Tale and the Hidden Forest. We kept waiting for it to kick in a gear, to really test our abilities beyond simplistic jumps at a relaxed pace. The last boss battle threatens to do exactly that, as it switches up the Dr Robotnik bosses for a kind of gauntlet against the clock. But even that’s so forgiving that we felt kinda bad and waited for the boss to catch up. We’d have given a few of our feathers for a difficulty increase.
It meant that we crossed the finish line, looking around bemusedly like Vincent Vega. We wondered where the rest of the game was; whether there was another challenge to move out of second gear and maybe into third or beyond. But we were done, achievement-hunting aside. Which, to the game’s credit, we did without a moment’s hesitation, as the platforming is at least taut as a drumskin.
Lila’s Tale and the Hidden Forest could have done with about double the content and a different approach to difficulty: a hard mode, a new game plus, or anything that would have raised a bead of sweat. But for all the grumbles, it’s a fine platformer that might make a fine purchase for a younger player. At least for an hour, until they move on.
You can buy Lila’s Tale and the Hidden Forest from the Xbox Store
