by “Reventure?” They probably should have called it “Recycled…”
This one’s gonna be a quickie because honestly, the game isn’t worth that much time. Reventure is advertised as an adventure game that boasts 100 different endings. Even if you got excited by that concept, calm yourself, because “endings” is a bit strong of a word. It would be more accurate to say that Reventure is actually a puzzle game with 100 levels that all take place on the same exact map. Much less exciting, but sadly, more to the truth.
Reventure has each “ending” starting you out in your house, where you’ll have to travel around the kingdom to acquire various items and interact with different NPCs. Instead of being thought-provoking or surreal, the endings are straight-forward and granular. For instance, one of the first items you can get is a sword. You can use this sword to stab NPCs. Thus, you must travel around the world, stabbing each unique NPC to get a different ending. Another early item you can get is a teddy bear(?) that allows you to hug NPCs. Thus you must travel around the world, hugging each unique NPC to get a different ending. See the problem here?
A good handful of the endings themselves are worth a chuckle or two, but are what I can only describe as “memey.” They rely on modern-day internet gamer references, and they do not rely sparingly. A bulk of the endings and in-game dialogue is a tongue-in-cheek reference to streaming, jump-scares, youtube videos, and just gaming culture in general. I guess in 30 years it could be used as a good tool to put a thumb on what common gaming culture was like at the time but it certainly doesn’t make it particularly fun. What’s worse is that the bar for entry to the references is extremely low–the theme of the game draws very heavily on Mario for platforming and Zelda for items, and overall felt like a very weak attempt at satire. We’ve seen this a hundred thousand times before–it’s no longer funny or particularly creative to reference either of these titles in your work; it would be like making fun of Star Wars in your mini-series. It was funny when back when Space Balls did it, but if you tried to do it today, it would be seen as cheap and repetitive.
This is all made worse by the fact that there is no real “game” to Reventure. The platforming is never meaningfully relevant (other than can I jump from point A to point B) and progression in the game just involves taking an item or series of items from one point of the Kingdom to another. Each item you carry weighs you down, limiting your jump height and lowering your speed, meaning that you need to meticulously plan out your item collection and pathing with each ending you go after. Thankfully, the game comes with a compass, map and hint system which prevents things from becoming completely tedious, because if these features weren’t in the game we’d all be forced to play with Google open on our second monitor to make the game bearable at all. That being said, gameplay quickly becomes stiffly mathematical–I need to get to point B. I am at point A. I can carry X number of items and still make it to point A. I need item Y. I need item Z to get item Y. Therefore I need to path from Z to Y and only carry X on my journey to B. Yeah… it’s just not great. There’s also only 1 enemy in the game, so that’s not helping things either. It is not an adventure game. It’s a puzzle game.
Reventure comes not recommended at Tier 3. It seemed very well-intentioned, but not creative enough to be worth playing through yourself. You might as well queue up one of numerous streamers or Youtubers who have undoubtedly played through this and just watch them suffer, because you’re not missing anything if you’re not the one in the pilot seat. If you’re too lazy to search Youtube yourself, you can follow the link below where I’ve done a Let’s Play through the game from start to finish–but it’s probably just best put on as background noise.