Technical Information

Developer: Stranga
Publisher: GrabTheGames
Release Date: January 18, 2020

Red Bow tells the story of Roh, a child who has strange nightmares and can’t seem to get rid of them.
It’s a story about second chances and regrets.

Despite the game’s visual style, it’s not an RPG, but rather a point-and-click game.

Final Thoughts – Analyzing the Game as a Whole

Graphics and UI

Well-made pixel art! Despite the low resolution, many assets turned out excellent (special mention to the trees and the forest floor textures).
The animations are quite simple, but they fit well with the game’s visual style.

The menu is fairly simple, but there are several small visual bugs where the text or label strings are larger than the area they’re inserted into. This doesn’t affect gameplay, but it’s visually unpleasant and easy to fix (and I honestly don’t understand why these small bugs haven’t been fixed even five months after the game’s release).

Despite the game being available in Portuguese, there are some strings that were not translated (i.e., bugs).

Soundtrack and Sound Effects

The game doesn’t have many songs or sound effects, but both are well made.
The only thing that bothered me a bit was the volume of the music on the final screen, which is much lower than the rest.

Gameplay

A very short game with an interesting message, but unfortunately, it wasn’t well developed.
The story becomes superficial and somewhat confusing because events happen too quickly. I must admit I was disappointed, I expected a deeper, or at least more intriguing, storyline—especially since the game’s style is clearly focused on storytelling.

There are multiple endings and several small actions that unlock achievements.

The game has some minor bugs that are easy to reproduce. What bothered me the most is that the options menu doesn’t disable during the credits, allowing the player to open it and mess with the settings. Another bug happens when opening the menu: you press the “Esc” key, the sound plays, but the menu doesn’t appear, so you have to press the key again.

Unfortunately, it seems the game lacked a proper final review before release. For such a simple and short game, it’s really a shame that the overall quality is so low, especially since these issues are easy to detect and fix.

The game has only one save slot. This is another negative point, since the game focuses heavily on narrative and has multiple endings, having additional save slots would allow players to better manage their choices.

Unfortunately, there is no joystick support.

I don’t want to be unfair, I don’t think Red Bow is a complete waste of time.
It’s not entirely linear, there are at least some puzzles to solve (which are quite easy), and for casual players, it may appeal to those who are less demanding.

Replayability and Game Retention

Honestly, I was very annoyed by the bugs and the unlocalized sections. The game ended up feeling extremely unfinished and ultimately ruined my experience.
I didn’t feel motivated to replay it to see the other endings.