About this game

Purchase Mega Drive Cartridge

Tanglewood: physical edition available now!

ROMs just don’t do it for you, huh? We get it. You can purchase Tanglewood on a cartridge here. It’s multi-region, and compatible with original PAL, NTSC and NTSC-J SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis consoles. It’ll even work on most clone consoles!

About the Game

They don’t make them like this any more. Designed from scratch on 90’s development hardware, built from the ground up in raw 68000 assembly code, Tanglewood is a true 16-bit platformer—now available on modern systems.

Originally released on SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis, Tanglewood is now on Steam! We at Big Evil Towers asked a couple of friends to help out, and they came through—quickly building a bespoke Mega Drive emulator, meaning you can play Tanglewood on PC exactly as it should be.

But there’s more: every digital copy of Tanglewood includes the Mega Drive ROM, DRM-free, for you to do with as you please. Use your own favourite emulator, play on original hardware via a flash cart, add to your Retropie setup—it’s your game. Take it and have fun!



Anyway, the game: Nymn is a young Djunn, who has been separated from his pack. Lost, nervous and alone, he needs to find his way through the sprawling forest of Tanglewood—a place of darkness, night terrors and strange, hungry beasts.

Help Nymn make it through to morning by using special abilities, lateral thinking and quick reactions to avoid, defeat and overcome the challenges and monsters that await!

• A true 16-bit game, designed and programmed on 90’s hardware
  
• 28 levels across eight story chapters
  
• Fast-paced 2D platforming meets interesting puzzles, tricks and surprises
  
• Hand-crafted pixel art with fluid animation
  
• Original soundtrack by freezedream, designed for the gorgeous tones of the YM2612
  
• Day/night cycle, secrets, achievements and collectables

Latest news

• Patch Notes·5 Sept 2018Official

  TANGLEWOOD Patch 1.03 is now LIVE!

  Patch 1.03 is now live, which provides the following improvements: Save history feature - allows you to backtrack to a previous save game Password entry feature - allows for sharing saved games between Mega Drive and PC versions Save Mega Drive ROM feature - allows for exporting the ROM file to a location of your choice (to play via emulator or flash cartridge) Startup fix for latest Ubuntu and Mint Linux distributions The patch applies to both the full game and the demo. Please let us know if you have any problems! Matt
  Read full article on Community Announcements (BigEvilCorporation)

• Patch Notes·22 Aug 2018Official

  Minor update - Linux startup issues

  We've pushed a minor patch to address problems with the game starting up on very recent Linux distributions - Ubuntu 18.04 and Mint Beta (Cinnamon). The change includes an updated stdc++ runtime library, and a missing PNG image library. Please let me know if you experience any other issues! Matt
  Read full article on Community Announcements (BigEvilCorporation)

• Patch Notes·19 Aug 2018Official

  Patch 1.02 News

  Hi! We're preparing Patch 1.02, which will contain the following changes: Fix for startup crash on stock, minimal Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS installation Password entry option for PC builds, allowing you to share your save games between PC and Mega Drive Save Mega Drive ROM tool to make it easier to extract ROM file Place cursor on 'Continue' option by default if save data is available We'll let you know when it's live! In the meantime, if you're experiencing any problems, please let us know ASAP and we'll add them to the next patch list. Cheers, Matt
  Read full article on Community Announcements (BigEvilCorporation)

• Patch Notes·17 Aug 2018Official

  TANGLEWOOD Demo and Patch 1.01 - now LIVE!

  Hello everyone! Patch 1.01 A patch has just gone live, which addresses the following: Fixed a startup crash on Windows 7 with video drivers missing the glMapBufferRangeARB extension Fixed Windows 10 high DPI scaling feature causing the game window to be the wrong size, or in the wrong position Fixed a bug causing the "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish" achievement to not trigger Fixed a bug on Windows 10 causing the game window to draw behind the taskbar in some screen resolutions The TANGLEWOOD Mega Drive game manual is now included in PDF format along with the ROM Thank you for everyone's patience while we tracked down the problems, please do let me know in the Discussions section if you experience any more issues, or email help@tanglewoodgame.com. TANGLEWOOD Demo Our demo has been approved by Valve, and is now LIVE! The demo includes the complete first chapter of TANGLEWOOD, and also includes the demo ROM file for you to try the game on your genuine SEGA console (via flash cart) or your favourite emulator. The demo also includes all fixes from patch 1.01. We hope everyone is enjoying the game, and thank you so so much for the kind reviews! Matt
  Read full article on Community Announcements (BigEvilCorporation)

• Patch Notes·16 Aug 2018Official

  Patch 1.01 and Steam Demo News

  Hello, TANGLEWOOD fans! Known Issues to be fixed in Patch 1.01 We've identified the following issues: Windows 7 users may experience a crash on startup due to a missing dependency Windows 10 users with high DPI monitors may experience incorrect fullscreen resolutions or incorrect game draw position A patch is being prepared and we hope for it to go live on the evening of Thursday 16th August. Thank you for everyone's patience on this, and thank you for all info provided to help us track it down! Steam Demo Valve have now approved our demo build for release. We're making preparations now (including updating it with Patch 1.01) and expect to release on the evening of Thrsday 16th August. Cheers, Matt
  Read full article on Community Announcements (BigEvilCorporation)