Developed/Published by: MiniVisions / Choice Provisions
Released: October 30th, 2014
Completed: 5th January, 2015
Completion: A high score of $2.20 in the main arcade mode.
Trophies / Achievements: n/a

Woah Dave! cost me a dollar (well, $1.04 with tax) and I can’t recommend it. I really want to give Woah Dave! a kicking, especially at the $5 it’s supposed to cost, but I’m going to try and be nicer than that? A bit???

Here’s what’s up with Woah Dave!. It’s a tiny arcade game that’s very (very) much in the style of Super Crate Box. Only instead of shooting baddies with a range of weapons, basically you pick up anything you run into (that’s not an enemy) and can throw it. Enemies hatch from eggs, and there are also skulls that explode. Enemies that run off the bottom of the screen jump to the top of the screen as a more powerful evolution. Occasionally you get a “woah” block that kills everything on screen, and later on flying saucers appear that destroy platforms. But that’s pretty much it.

Woah Dave! is, you know, interesting as a case study, because it’s like someone looked at Super Crate Box and decided to get it all a bit wrong. For example, are you a fan of Super Crate Box’s crap jumping? Well, please enjoy Woah Dave!’s “Unity test project”-quality game feel! Then there’s the enemies respawn; where in Super Crate Box they simply appear again from the same spawning position, in Woah Dave! they leap back up the screen and can kill you during their leap. It’s the kind of thing where you’re like “was this actually a game design decision?” Being killed by enemies shooting up the screen is zero percent fun.

There’s also the cool times that involve your “weapons” the eggs and skulls. Yes, they start to flash right before they change/explode so you know you need to throw them, but because you pick up the first thing you walk into every time, there are many fun experiences where you pick up things right before they change/explode or you simply mistime a throw because of how subtle the timer is.

I can hear the designer moaning “but that’s the design! That’s the core of the whole game!” Perhaps, but it’s… not a good design? There is no excuse in an arcade game in leaving the player feeling frustrated because their character picked something up they didn’t want to pick up (particularly fun when things get piled up, as there’s no obvious rule to what your character picks up, so congrats on picking up the about-to-explode egg hidden behind that fresh skull) or killed because things aren’t clear enough.

Could you fix Woah Dave!? Maaaybe. Respawning enemies not killing the player and a much more clear timing on bombs and eggs (not quite sure what, but even a timer would be better) would do some work, but you’ve still go the problem of items piling up, so don’t let eggs and skulls layer? But then you have to improve the jump so you can get to the thing you want to pick up if it’s between other things you don’t! Thing is, I totally get how Woah Dave! is playable as is; how you could get to this point and be like “pretty good! Ship it.”

It just crumbles completely if you play it intensely for a few hours. Frustrating.

Will I ever play it again? I shall not, no.

Final Thought: It’s weird because the game is close to one of those “expert player game loops” that you get in things like Geometry Wars etc., where you’re supposed to let enemies evolve to the point the screen is crowded and then wipe them all out with a woah block. But it doesn’t work because the jump is so crap and eggs/skulls change so imperceptibly on a crowded screen that past the first woah block you are much better off keeping the screen clear as things get faster and more dangerous anyway. $2.20 isn’t much to write home about, but I got the score by playing conservatively past a dollar.