Hello there scary gamers of Roblox, WoodReviewer here to take a look at every single game in the latest Halloween Spotlight event which should be ending right as I publish this review. As I’ve been doing these reviews for every Roblox event for the past year and a half I feel like everyone should understand the basic concept by now: I play every game in the event until I complete the tasks for the badges, and if I see any bad wood grain while doing the tasks the game fails. Also if I know the game has bad wood grain elsewhere from playing it before I can go on side treks to check if it is still there if I feel like being mean to the developer.

Is it fair? Probably not.

Do I care? No. They should know better by now.

Armless Detective by Top of the Barrel

The first game that I played during the event is one that I never hard of with Armless Detective. Initially I thought the game would pass as all of the maps were made in the retro style that is becoming popular now, even going so far as to use the old glue texture. But then I took a closer look at my avatar and noticed the magnifying glass the game provides you has bad wood grain on the handle. Why is the only use of any texture in the entire game some bad wood grain on a handle? I have no clue, but it fails the game.

Verdict: Fail

Dead Rails by RCM Games

It’s Dead Rails and the stupid signs that have been in-game with various updates still have bad wood grain on their vertical supports. I have been over this numerous times but the issue is still here and I hate it.

Verdict: Fail

Racket Rivals by x Small World Games

Another new-to-me game for this event, Racket Rivals is also the only one whose only bad wood grain is on a tree. I don’t mean that every other game had fine wood grain on a tree, but they all have easier to describe wood grain somewhere else. If you want more info on how trees work you can read my admittedly dated blog post right here but the TL;DR version is the bark should be the same everywhere. So the fact parts of the bark have vertical wood grain while others have horizontal wood grain is bad.

Verdict: Fail

Restaurant Tycoon 3 by UlraW

A game that I am very familiar with there should be almost no doubt that Restaurant Tycoon 3 would fail my test; the only question is what would I choose to fail it on this time. And in this case it is the wooden planks on the docks, which for some reason have vertical wood grain on the face in the middle of the gaps on the docks. Yeah, even I have no clue how that happens.

Verdict: Fail

Garden Tower Defense by Garden Defenders

Another game that takes full advantage of the smooth-plastic retro style, Garden Tower Defense actually commits to the bit by having the entire game be nothing but smooth plastic. Take not untitled tag game, committing to the bit and not tempting fate is the correct way to do things.

Verdict: Pass

Strongman Ultra by The Gang Stockholm

The lone true simulator game in this event, Strongman Ultra is an odd man out in that sense, but it fits right in with the fact the game is entirely smooth plastic aside from a random sign that has bad wood grain on the vertical support.

But it does set itself apart again with the fact it has bad wood grain on the top face of the sign as well. This is genuinely impressive as you almost have to try to manage this.

Verdict: Fail

Claw Machine Simulator by RB Battles Games

I know I just called Strongman Ultra the only true simulator but Claw Machine Simulator does enough differently that it is different from most of the other more generic simulators. Anyway the issue here is with the boat you ride while going to not-Hell. It appears to have some wood grain to it that goes horizontal along the length of the boat, but at the bow of the boat where it curves up the wood grain still goes perfectly horizontal instead despite the very front of the bow being vertical.

Verdict: Fail

DOORS by LSPLASH

The doors have bad wood grain.

Verdict: Fail

Michael’s Zombies by MZCommunity

Another game that mostly shunned using wood grain, the only real example of bad wood grain on in-game levels was this poorly lit pallet that has bad wood grain on some of the cross members.

Now you could squint really hard to see that or I could brighten up the image. Or I could just post a picture of the hand grenade with bad wood grain on the handle instead.

Verdict: Fail

GEF my MPHASE

A new game by MPHASE to the Roblox event circles, GEF tried to make my job harder by adding a special “Bad Wood Grain Mode” whenever I spawned that made my question if what I was seeing was actually an Easter Egg or bad wood grain.

Luckily though the power of alternate accounts I was able to verify there was really bad wood grain in-game, with the most clear example being the bad wood grain on these floor supports in a basement.

Verdict: Fail

Funky Friday by Ltye Interactive

Funky Friday is an interesting game because despite being in four events now the devs always seem to fix/remove my issues with wood grain in time for the next event, but despite that I keep finding more issues. This time it was on these random fence posts on a random farm map that have horizontal wood grain instead of vertical grain. I seriously wasn’t even looking at the maps, I just misclicked when started a round

Verdict: Fail

Keys by Daybreaker

Yeah I just have no words to describe what is going on with this image behind me. Honestly it would probably be quicker to describe that wood grain that is correct vs what is wrong which is never a good sign when a majority of the parts in the screenshot are made out of wood.

Verdict: Fail

Build a Zoo by Century Farms

Oh wow another Build a Garden inspired game that is entirely smooth plastic. This should be an easy pass unless they do something incredibly stupid to somehow add bad wood grain to the game.

Oh look, the hammer has bad wood grain on the handle. That is stupid.

Verdict: Fail

weird gun game by Redscape Interactive

A game that I had never hard of until The Takeover that returns for its second straight event, weird gun game had maps mostly made of smooth plastic for The Takeover so I thought the devs might clean up their act for the Halloween Spotlight. And then I saw they added a wooden mansion map for this event and instantly saw blood in the water. I mean, they added an in-game ad for a gun and added bad wood grain to a picture frame. They literally are trying to get me to look at this.

Verdict: Fail

Tower Heroes by Pixel-bit Studio

A game that broke me in The Hatch by having bad wood grain on an real-life plushie, Tower Heroes goes back to more conventional wood grain in this event by having some bad wood grain on the legs for a chair. Ol’ Faithful always lets me down.

Verdict: Fail

NFL Universe Football by Voldex

A game made by a major game developer in Voldex with a ton of high-quality animations, assets, and filled to the brim with what I can only assume to be costly brand integrations, this game doesn’t know how wood grain works on signs.

Verdict: Fail

99 Nights in the Forest by Grandma’s Favorite Games

My grandmother would disown me if I didn’t know what wood grain looks like on a basic work bench, and he can barely send an email without help.

Verdict: Fail

PETAPETA School of Nightmares by Omochi_Studio’s PETA PETA

I still don’t know what a PETA PETA is or how to spell it since the game name and studio name are giving me conflicting spellings, but what I do know is that shelves should have vertical wood grain for their vertical supports.

Verdict: Fail

The Mimic by CTStudio

I could come up with something witty or original here but at this point I am genuinely running out of new ways to describe bad wood grain on chair legs.

Verdict: Fail

Blair by Spooky Scary Games

Speaking of things I am running out of new ways to describe, how many new ways do I have to describe bad wood grain on vertical supports for signs like here in Blair. I mean, I still need to save some original quip for Fisch later.

Verdict: Fail

Adopt Me by Uplift Games

After Adopt Me appeared in The Haunt last year and I saw some bad wooden planks in some player’s home a friend informed me that what I saw was some building asset Adopt Me had in its building menu. As a result I added this random wooden plank model to my house and until they add proper end grain to it I will fail Adopt Me in every event it is featured in.

Verdict: Fail

Guts & Blackpowder by Guts & Blackpowder

As a pseudo-historical game focused on recreating combat in the early 1800’s down to making it take 30 seconds to reload a gun, I expected a little bit of historical accuracy from Guts & Blackpowder. Unfortunately what I got was bad wood grain on these spindles on the stair case made me disappointed.

Verdict: Fail

Banana Eats by RyCitrus

Another game making its first return to a Roblox event since The Haunt, Banana Eats also still has the same issues that plagued it since last year with this wooden barrel having horizontal wood grain instead of the correct vertical wood grain.

Verdict: Fail

World//Zero by Twin Atlas

I know that many Twin Atlas devs know about me. I know they follow me. I know they see my complaints. And yet still there is bad wood grain on the crates in the starting area for World//Zero.

Verdict: Fail

Epic Minigames by TypicalType

Yeah I just have absolutely zero clue what is going on with these fence posts. Like seriously how do the front and side faces have bad wood grain but a sliver of the front face is correct? I don’t event know how I would try and cause that to happen.

Verdict: Fail

Fisch by Fisching

Yeah still have nothing on a new and unique way to say that the vertical supports have bad wood grain.

Verdict: Fail

Happy by Panik.

Finally another game that has proper wood grain. And by proper wood grain I do mean all smooth plastic and actually all smooth plastic until untitled tag game. And honestly I am find with that because out of the 27 games featured so far this is only the second one to not have any bad wood grain and at this point I will take any small win I can get.

Verdict: Pass

Welcome to Bloxburg by Bloxburg Development

I was chatting to a friend who doesn’t do Roblox stuff and they were shocked that Bloxburg was owned by the Coffee Stain Studios and thought for sure this would mean the game would be held to higher standards than other games on the site. I then started to rant about how the wood grain on these creates is bad and he quickly tried to change the subject before I got too far into my rant.

Verdict: Fail

Driving Empire by Voldex

A game made by a major game developer in Voldex with a ton of high-quality animations, assets, and filled to the brim with what I can only assume to be costly brand integrations, this game doesn’t know how wood grain works on signs.

Verdict: Fail

Dress to Impress by Dress to Impress Group

Honestly it is impressive how Dress to Impress went from one of the few games to actually pass my tests while actually using proper wood grain on some assets to now devolving into using bad wood grain on crates now.

untitled tag game by _create

Hi Jasper. I know you wanted to have proper wood grain and at least tried to give it a proper chance, so why did you tempt fate by including a wooden clip board? Did you not think I would pay attention during the cutscene? Or did the hubris get to you again?

Verdict: Fail

The Hub

So one mistake I made was that I played the game prior to launch and noticed some bad wood grain in the back of the little starting cabin, but after the game launched the cabin interior was inaccessible so I couldn’t document it. That is my bad. Luckily after completing the event I was able to return to the cabin and clip under the floor to find some bad end grain on these planks, and I’ll let them count.

So, where exactly does that leave us? Overall the event was terrible, like honestly crap. Of the 31 games, only 2 have proper wood grain. That comes out to 6.5% of the games having proper wood grain. That is the lowest yet with the Winter Showcase last year having 8%. The rest of the events come in with The Hatch at 27%, The Classic at 25%, The Games at 20%, The Haunt at 18%, The Hunt at 17%, and The Hunt: Second Edition at 12%. It is honestly disgraceful and I’m sure will only be on-upped by an event one day that has 0 games with proper wood grain because most of you genuinely have no idea how wood grain works.