Redden: 100denarii

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Redden: 100denarii, elsewhere referred to by the simple title Redden, is an Arcade-style game released on mobile devices in 2015 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2022. This game’s bizarre framing device focuses on a thrift shop, the titular One Hundred Denarii (“denarii” being the plural for denarius, an ancient Roman coin), inside which multiple anthropomorphized unwanted items regale each other with tales about their past lives as various projectiles. This game’s gameplay has players guiding these projectiles to ensure that they reach their target.

On cursory glance, the presentation in Redden is appealing – the visuals are stylized, depicting a monochrome and largely silhouetted world with a few red highlights that can be quite striking. Unfortunately, this presentation is undercut by the odd animation of its characters, with unnatural movements and ugly clipping. These visuals are backed by environmental noises that would help to build the game’s atmosphere if it weren’t for the distracting visual issues.

The gameplay itself is fairly simple, tasking players with moving their projectile up and down as it moves in its flight to its target, avoiding obstacles and being mindful of dwindling energy used by your corrections. In theory, this could make for some fun, skill-based gameplay. In practice… well…

Quite simply, the gameplay here is broken. Hit detection is an absolute disaster, with your projectile at times getting stopped in mid-air when passing near an obstacle but not actually touching it. What’s more, your ability to turn up and down is limited, which often means that by the time you see an object appear on-screen, you already need to have been turning to avoid it or you’re already too late, forcing you to rely on memorization rather than reacting to the environment.

If Redden tightened up its visuals so they don’t look so unintentionally silly, fixed its hit detection, and gave players better ability to guide their projectile, this could be a fun, stylish Arcade-style game. As-is, it’s a terrible mess that is simply not fun to play.

tl;dr – Redden: is an Arcade-style game where players guide a projectile to its target. Unfortunately, what would have been a stylish presentation is shattered by unintentionally silly elements, and the gameplay is ruined by horrible hit detection and poor control. This could have been a solid mix of style and simple gameplay, but instead it’s an embarrassment. Skip it.

Grade: D-

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