So, I have some good and bad news. Good news is that I, WoodReviewer, am here to do another blog post. The bad news is that I will not be reviewing the fixed version of The Wind that Asimo was suppose to make. He has until Sunday now. That was not an easy decision, but something came up. You see, BADGRAPHIX showed up on Twitter and issued me a challenge to find bad wood grain in one of his places.

Knowing what I normally do to devs who challenge me, this was a bold move. However, it was even bolder because I was already checking out his places for bad wood grain before he even Tweeted this, and I already found some in Castle in the Sky Ascension . So he had, in effect, issues me a challenge to find bad wood grain in a game that I had already found it. Bold move.

You really should not challenge me to find bad wood grain before you check the games yourself for bad wood grain. Just look at this board that serves as a bridge. Bad wood grain on the top, but good wood grain on the side. Need a better picture? Look at this one of another board showing the same use of improper wood grain.

Anyone can see those are bad. Well, should. Judging by the fact I still need to call people out on it, many have not got the message. Still, atleast those assets were just copied and pasted, not like multiple different bridges had the same use of bad wood grain or anything.

Could you guess the sarcasm? Still, if the only bad assets were the bridges, that is only terrible since they are needed to get from point A to B. Not like they are a significant portion of the game’s progression. Speaking of progression, want to know what stops it? Fallen logs. Like these logs.

To understand why this is so bad you need to understand that this ruins the number one argument that people can defend bad wood grain with: What if it just is bad in that universe? But as you can see, some of these logs have good and bad wood grain, both of which can’t exist. They seal the fate of the game to have bad wood grain.

If you aren’t interested in bridges or random logs blocking the path, lets view a more structurally important piece of wood grain: The support for this platform. The wood grain wraps around it, while it should go with it from the platform to the wall.

Very few examples of bad wood grain annoy me more than others. The best example of one that does are sign posts.

Just so we are clear, bad wood grain always annoys me. Bad wood grain on sign posts, along with chairs and tables, annoys me because it is so obvious. It just doesn’t look right. It is easy to take out a wooden post and look at it and see how the wood grain goes. It is clear; the wood grain should go up and down. No if, ands, or buts.

Enough on regular wood, lets review some wooden planks. See the flooring on this platform? It had bad wood grain.

Some frequent readers will recognize this issue as it has been featured in several of my recent blogs. Well, most of them, actually. But I get to use the same picture I created before to explain why it is bad for a third time. The following picture is how it should look; lines on the top batching the lines on the end. It should always look like this for flooring.

Usually, the last picture of my blog posts is a picture of wood grain hinting at the end of the game. However, BADGRAPHIX was right; wood grain was used sparingly, and large chunks of the game did not have. As a result, my final picture to prove I actually played most of the game has no wood grain. I just want to prove to people that I actually play games, not just look around the starting area for quick images of bad wood grain.

Just pointing out the gap in the treasure chest lid

Still, sparingly used bad wood grain is bad wood grain. In Castle of the Sky, most of the wood grain I did find was bad, meaning the game was bad. Most of it is likely an easy fix, too. Everything I’ve shown in this blog would take at most two clicks with a texture flip plugin to fix. To fix the 20 or so pieces of wood grain I found in-game would take about 60 clicks. It would take longer to find the bad wood than to fix it, meaning it all should be fixed well before The Wind should be fixed. Also, this Sunday Asimo, don’t forget.