A Throwback to Old 3D Platformers: A Raccoo Venture Review

By Teepu

Player(s): 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC

Raccoo Venture is a 3D platformer impressively made by a single person that is a major throwback to the games we used to get a lot of on the PS1 and N64. In many ways, it benefits and suffers from that mentality, leading to quite the rough road it treads.

To begin, I would like to emphasize that at the core Raccoo Venture is not a bad game. The issue comes with the constant trade-off between good and bad elements that keeps the game from being truly special. First off are the graphics. The game has some very striking and charming visuals, with some nice details and a very pleasant cartoony look to them. On the other hand, it also suffers from some generic designs, often stiff or low-frame animations and backgrounds that look super bland which contrasts against the levels you are in. The overworld is especially bad and suffers from extremely bland designs that just make me think of old fan-games from the late 2000s. There is not a particularly good balance between detail and practicality, where some parts look like they are high effort and others look like stock assets pulled from a tutorial site. The audio suffers similar issues. The music is mostly catchy and memorable, but loops far too quickly, making the music more grating than it should be. The sound effects, on the other hand, are considerably basic. On a quick side note, be advised I played this game on the Xbox Series X, and there was nothing to indicate the game would run better or worse elsewhere. It is not a demanding game, and it ran well.

Now let us get to the game itself. Right when you start it up, it provides a painfully basic story: The bad guys stole your chessboard, and you need to get all the pieces back. Now mind you, I do not expect a narrative masterpiece out of a game like this, but that was absolutely one of the worst reasons I’ve ever seen to start an adventure, especially when the main character has no personality to drive the game forward. That is a running theme throughout the game. Things that should have had an impact have none because the main character is bland, uninteresting, and undeveloped. It is worth mentioning that the importance of the chess board is explored a little as you progress the game, but Raccoo himself remains dull the entire time. Considering the game’s desire to emulate old games like Spyro or Banjo-Kazooie, I was hoping for at least a similar level of charm surrounding Raccoo.

The game utilizes a fixed angle camera as you traverse each level. At first I was a bit irritated at this, but it is a positive point as the level design is very specifically structured around it, so you rarely have to wonder about your positioning or where you should (or shouldn’t) be going. As a collect-a-thon 3D platformer should be, this game is chock full of things to acquire. There are breath orbs for more time underwater, chess board pieces (every tile, every piece, every part of the board), outfits (some of which unlock areas in levels), little dolls, coins (for buying things), upgrades, journal pages (that help flesh out the world’s lore), and probably more I’m forgetting. This makes every level full of rewards, which can be very satisfying. The problem is that a large number of collectibles are very obtuse in the way they are hidden, and you need to have a certain number of collectibles in order to progress to the next set of levels. I ran into multiple situations where I absolutely couldn’t find enough collectibles (mainly in world 4, to enter the final world) and I had to struggle to scour the levels, only to discover a collectible accidentally (hidden in an out-of-sight cave entrance, for example) that has absolutely no hints in the world of its existence. It got extremely frustrating to the point of me wanting to quit. What is worse is that I had no desire to 100% the game, which is not like me when it comes to games like these. There’s nothing wrong with having hard to find collectibles, but gating game progression behind these, as well as giving no discernible hints via the levels themselves, is extremely poor game design.

That leads to arguably the two most important parts of the game: how Raccoo controls, and the level design itself. The controls are a bit hard to describe, everything feels a little off. While it is responsive and everything seemingly controls as it should, it also does not feel like I’m able to do everything I want to, and this is likely attributed to the very flawed level design. The structure and flow of the levels is mostly fantastic, barring the obtuse collectibles mentioned before. There are a small handful of situations where I felt totally lost on how to do basic progression in the level, but a little bit of exploring solved that problem. It would have been nice if the game had some way of showing the player concepts before throwing harder versions of said concepts at the player, but most of the time you are left to figure things out with nary a peep of a hint to show you that certain mechanics even exist.

On top of all that, the games levels require a level of precision that is very demoralizing. Many platforms require accuracy to the millimeter to make jumps, and moving said platforms just a tiny bit closer together would make a world of difference. This is the major failing of the game, to me: the placement of platforms that could all have a millimeter of that distance closed. There’s also weird situations where you’ll jump on a platform and it’s very slippery for no reason at all, and so staying on is very hard; or you’ll be walking along an invisible platform made visible by a timed item, but you are given no leeway and only have a small visible range of the platform ahead of you, leading to many deaths. Or you'll be bombarded by projectiles, while trying to do a lot of platforming, with the projectiles being launched with no discernible pattern leading to many accidental deaths.

The list goes on quite a bit on how a ton of minor game design and level design choices lead to the game being immensely frustrating to play. It also does not help that falling off an edge is an instant death. The unfair challenge could be somewhat forgiven, were the checkpoints more forgiving or if there was a permanent health upgrade (I didn’t find any, at least). Finally, the combat if one could even call it that, is very bland. All you can do is throw items at enemies or ground pound them. There is no growth in the combat and it gets stale fast, with the boss battles being dull and irritating.

If you could not tell, Raccoo Venture is an odd game that has some very interesting and exciting elements, but is brought down by some very questionable game design and a relatively short experience. Unless you are a hardcore fan of the genre, and really want something new to play (or want to support the person who made it, a valiant first effort), I wouldn’t recommend this game. I do hope that the developer takes the feedback to heart, because if these issues are addressed there is room for a truly special game in a potential sequel, and I would be more than happy to dive into that if it happened. As it stands though, look elsewhere in games like New Super Lucky’s Tale or A Hat In Time if you are in the mood for a retro inspired 3D platformer.

For More Information on Raccoo Venture:
https://www.qubyteinteractive.com/games/raccoo-venture/

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Story: D-
Gameplay: D+
Graphics: C 
Music/Sound: C
Value: C+

OVERALL: D+

Pros:
+ Lots of collectibles that are rewarding to acquire.
+ Solid music.
+ Performs well.

Cons:
- Extremely poor level design that punishes the player too harshly.
- Too many obtuse collectibles are required to progress to each world.
- Story and main character are dull and uninspired.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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