Reventure

If I was going to compare this to something, I would say it's closer to Shadowgate than any other game. The gameplay revolves around finding the right combination of items to take with you and the right path to the goal or the gameplay revolves around finding all the ways you can die/achieve a game over, depending on how you want to approach it. The graphics can be a little hard to look at some times (I'm looking at you, zoomed-in perspective), otherwise, they are functional and I sometimes get the feeling that this could have been a decent text-based adventure. I played with a gamepad and found the controls to be smooth. Overall, Reventure is put together pretty well. Lastly, there is a lot of content here, from the 100 endings and secrets as well as changes to the environment depending on how much mucking about you've done. The humor is a mix of poking fun at old tropes (which is becoming an old trope) and jokes that will probably age poorly in about five years, but there is joy to be found in the meat of the game.

Developers didn't waste time on technical gimmics or fancy graphics. Instead of that they managed to create fairly complex jet compact map filled with 100 different endings. And each ending comes with unique description and each respawn has unique intro text explaining instead of calling it Groundhog Day style timeloop. At first you find endings everywhere by just messing around. But that will only get you to ~25%. Then you have to start exploring and making map as familiar as your home, but even that will give you 50% progress. Third quarter comes from lucky accidents, failed plans etc. Last 25 endings are pretty well hidden and may need help of internal hint system. That internal hint system is literally hints, not cheats. You have to collect notes and unlock few items to fully use it. And using it never reveals too much to accidently spoil anything. It is much better to use such well integrated system than trying to find one spoiler free hint from internet. Graphics are pretty common Unity 2d: Big pixel assets in high resolution world. But that doesn't mean developers are lazy! The world does feel natural, everything kind of fits together and there are few dozen unlockable character outfits which all make sense if you read intros and outros of each ending and respawn.

It's a "short" game about the question "What happens when I..." we probably all ask ourselves a lot in adventure games. Instead of running into walls with that question, here it is the core of the game and you are encouraged to try as much nonsense as possible. My favorite scenario was "Ok, I am a cat and I will save the princess from the dark lord using only this chicken" and it actually worked. xD You can kill or hug absolutely everyone and everything in this game and the results are sometimes hilarious. There were two solutions I tried the devs didn't seem to have thought of, but apart from those there's really a lot you can do. The game is a love letter to Zelda and at the same time criticizes it and turns those points into puzzle elements which make you find certain paths and select the right order in which to collect items, since every additional item reduces your agility and at some point you just break down completely, so you can't just carry around tons of tools all the time and have to think about what you really need for your current plan. Some endings have aftermaths in the world to the next runs, which adds more variety to the world and also a few shortcuts later. I got all 108 endings in 10 hours and only needed a walkthrough for a few of them when something didn't work out the way I thought it would and you were supposed to do it differently although that didn't happen often and right at the end of the secret content there's a massive trolling moment, but I won't spoil that. The difficulty is just right for me, even the challenge rooms were doable and I had to do them three times, because I did let myself get fooled by the deliberate trolling. I highly recommend that game, the only real gripe I have is, that although it is a Unity game and it wouldn't be much work to port it to Linux/Mac, it's still Windows only, hopefully that will change at some point, since I know people who would really appreciate this game but don't use WINE.

This game is an absolute blast to play. It is as if the text based Reigns series had a child with the Legend of Zelda. It has the mechanics of Zelda and the shenanigans and character of a game like Reigns. Exploring this world and discovering new endings, items, skins, and secret passages is a real treat. Often times I find myself purposefully killing my poor hero just to unlock the next unique and witty ending. As of right now I have sunk about 15 hours into the game myself and have only discovered about 55 of the 100 endings. Some of the endings can be more of a pain to traverse to, so its nice that the devs have added different quick travel portals that spawn in after certain hidden endings. I have let 2 of my friends test the game and by the end of their play session both of them were determined to get the game and continue their progress. It is also facinating to watch and see how everyone plays this game differently and unlocks different endings first. Overall, the game has witty character and a ton of fun, but not excessive, pop culture references which is the back bone of this game. The game's personallity is the true factor that keeps me going. Pros: -Has controller support, and polished mechanics -you can kill the developers of the game -great for low spec machines and laptops -its ONLY $8 for 20+ hours of gameplay -your actions affect the map and can have consequences Cons: -The devs sent me to a parallel universe where shotguns dont exist...