Insanity is not trying to do something over and over again so you can see all the results! This time around I take a look at the surprisingly addicting and superbly fun, Reventure!
If you could experience every possible outcome of a given event, would you take advantage of the opportunity? I mean, wouldn’t it be fascinating to see what would’ve happened if you did something just a little bit differently? Or made a different decision? However, this would mean you would have to have the ability to roll back time and try again. That or you’re just stuck in the modestly successful Groundhog Day movie with the ineffable Bill Murray.
This of course is an ongoing theme in video games as well, where death and failure isn’t the end and you can always continue or try again. And with no real consequences for your misadventures, you’re encouraged to experiment because everything resets to the way it was before! But what if that concept was taken a little bit further? Where you can always try again, but every unique action has equally as unique repercussions? Oh, and what if the devs wrote snarky little stories to go along with them?
Well my dear backloggers, this time around I’ll be taking a look at the game that not only encourages you to rescue the Princess, but also lets you sacrifice her to the dark lord and then lets you marry her father and become one and then lets you abandon her and become a pirate, Reventure! So, grab your Legendary Sword and prepare to change history a few more times, because it’s time for another Backlog Review!!
Reventure is a 2D side-scrolling adventure game developed and published by Pixelatto. Starting its humble beginnings as Lonk’s Greedy Adventure, a proof of concept entry for a Ludum Dare 48 hour GameJam in 2017, Reventure was meant to be a parody of the archetypal adventure game formula. Where the “hero” sets out on an adventure to rescue a princess from the clutches of evil. Only in this game, the player could encounter various silly endings (six total) as a result of their actions or missteps.
After receiving praise for its uniqueness and charm, development continued on Lonk’s Greedy Adventure a few months later and would eventually be released on Steam Early Access and rebranded simply as Lonk’s Adventure in 2018. Now boasting 50 endings and a multitude of refinements to both the gameplay and the design.
But that wasn’t enough for Pixelatto, because one year and one more rebranding later, Lonk’s Adventure would leave Early Access as the aptly named Reventure and come with it even more refinements and a whopping 100 different endings to obtain! And it’s available right now on PC and the Nintendo Switch!
In Reventure you play as Tim, or his brother, or maybe even his third cousin twice removed on his mother’s side, and they all have an unquenching thirst for adventure! Thusly you unceremoniously set out on a quest to rescue the Princess who has recently been kidnapped by the inattentive and never present Dark Lord!
Along the way you’ll encounter a bevy of the Dark Lord’s minions, quaint characters and death traps that want nothing more than to stop you dead in your tracks! And believe you me, they will. But that just leaves room for all of your siblings, acquaintances and amorphous doppelgangers to take your place and try their hand at changing the fate of the kingdom!
If I’m going to be perfectly honest, when I first encountered Reventure, I didn’t really expect much from it. Upon early impressions it reminded me of the legions of deeply discounted shovelware you’d find on Steam or within the Nintendo eShop that try to cash in on the “retro” look.
But on the other hand it’s concept, featuring 100 different endings, peaked my interest. Enough so, that I thought I’d give it a chance and see what it was all about. I was still a little hesitant mind you, because 100 endings seemed like a big commitment. But after discovering I could kill the King and then fall in love with him and become his “Queen”, within minutes of each other, I knew Reventure was something special.
Sure the graphics are simple with very little detail and the actual gameplay lacks complexity, but the package as a whole more than makes up for it. You’ll also see that the further you get into the game, the more charming the aesthetics become, with more nuance and variety than I initially gave it credit for. Seriously, I was genuinely impressed with how much Pixelatto was able to do with so little! And honestly if the gameplay was any more complex, trying to hunt down each and every one of those 100 endings would have become much too tedious.
And that’s kinda where my biggest criticism lies with Reventure. The tedium. I say that because you’ll be restarting each and every time you discover an ending and you’ll be walking through the same areas over and over again, time after time. I found I couldn’t play it for long periods of time before I had to turn it off and walk away. But then some time would pass and I’d be thinking about it again, wondering what else I could unearth. So, I’d turn it back on and instantly there would be a big smile on my face as I discovered another clever and goofy ending.
Truthfully, that’s it’s biggest appeal. That sense of discovery. One moment you’ll be trying to escape the Dark Lord’s castle with the princess in tow, only to get eaten by a mimic, and the next you’ll be jumping around willy nilly in the desert and die of exhaustion. And because of Reventure’s clever design and the fact that it gives you the opportunity to utilize all of the tools at your disposal, in inventive ways, to solve each of its “puzzles”. You’ll find yourself coming back for more. It also helps that there’s a catchy soundtrack to keep you motivated.
I absolutely love discovering games like Reventure and I would highly recommend you check it out. It was an unexampled experience that I've not seen before and at $10 or less you honestly can’t go wrong. You’ll have hours of entertainment ahead of you and a smile permanently affixed to your face! So go check it out, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. And I challenge you to see how many of its 100 endings you can discover before you have to break out a guide!
Originally posted on TwosomesUP. Hive blog powered by ENGRAVE.
