At E3 2019 Bethesda announced the game Deathloop about two fighters stuck in a time loop. It just so happened that not long before this, an unusual indie platformer was released Reventure, which can also be compared in one way or another with "Groundhog Day". The heroes here also have to die a lot, suffer defeat and start over. But at the same time the color of the mood in Reventure much brighter and ironic.
Adventures on repeat
Groundhog Day always starts the same way in the game. The hero wakes up in bed, goes to an audience with the king and is given the task of rescuing the kidnapped princess. To do this you need to take the legendary sword that is in the cave. But exploits and adventures can end before they even begin. They hit a guard with a sword – that’s it, they put him in prison. We tripped over a stone near the house and broke our bones. Jumped into the water without noticing the sign “Piranhas” – you were devoured, and a logical obituary appeared on the screen: “Either our hero did not notice the sign, or was an idiot!»
And such irony runs through everything here. If you exit the game without pausing it, when you return you will find the following epitaph for the hero: “While you were away, your character, left without proper care, died. But I hope you had a wonderful time – while you were writing or chatting, someone died!"If the hero lies in bed for too long at the very beginning, then we will be told that while he was sleeping, a lot of bad things happened in the kingdom, some kind of epidemic began, and the main villain simply left due to boredom. Like, congratulations on another fiasco.
Or this is my favorite. In one of the places on the map you can find a disc with the game.. Reventure. After this, we will be told that the hero, naturally, was carried away by this masterpiece and forgot about everything in the world – and about saving the princesses too. Such wonderful and ironic postmodernism.
And all this is not framed as an ordinary defeat followed by an offer to boot from the last save. No, these are all possible endings available in the game. There may be a hundred of them in total. After receiving each, everything starts all over again: morning, bed, a new hero, who is again tasked with saving the princess, and to do this, the first thing you need to do is take the legendary sword in the cave behind the house..
Looking for the end
All this, of course, https://12bet-casino.co.uk/withdrawal/ can get boring – especially considering the fact that the locations here are not randomly generated, but are repeated. But then the understanding comes that the goal here is not to save the bride, but to explore the world and get all these hundred endings. And then the attitude towards what is happening changes dramatically. After all, even saving the princess may not actually be the best ending. And when you finally find this seemingly good ending, the game will still begin another “Groundhog Day”.
That is, here irony and postmodernism come to the fore, accompanied by the wild imagination of the authors who came up with a hundred ways to end this endless adventure. Moreover, in the same locations there are always many options for where to go – left, right, jump and climb up or down and even dig tunnels down. To check all the options, you will really need more than one playthrough. For example, you got to the dragon, it burned with its flame, then you found a special lava reflector and ran to it in a good mood and in full combat readiness. But will the lava deflector protect from the sharp claws of the lizard?.
Or you may find a room with three levers, one of which seems to open access to treasure chests. Which one exactly is unclear. Ironic clues around us confuse us rather than help us. Therefore, it’s easy to pull the wrong one and die in one way or another in traps – you have to come back several times and try other options. And at this moment you are not at all bored – you wonder what’s in the chests.
Time doesn’t wait
And the chests may contain some useful item – for example, bombs to blow up a stone blocking a passage; a special helmet that allows you to be attracted to the ceiling; the same lava deflector. However, some objects are so cool that our hero simply breaks his legs under their weight – here’s another ending for you.
By the way, the more different “devices” we find, the harder it is for the character to carry them – he seems to become cooler with all these objects, but at the same time he stops jumping high. That is, here the game forces us not to blindly drag everything into our pockets, but to act more thoughtfully and prudently. If anything, in some locations there are special altars where you can sacrifice and reset all items.
What’s also invigorating is the fact that after each ending, “Groundhog Day” will be started by other heroes – it could be the same character, but already resurrected as a zombie, his friend, or brother, or some strange, unpleasant-looking creature, or even a cat. At some point, before starting a new playthrough, we have the opportunity to choose in what form we will again go to save the princess.
Finally, time is still constantly passing here. After each ending, weeks and months pass before a new savior appears. And during this time, something may change in the game world. For example, a bird will appear in a previously empty (seemingly) nest. You are free to take it and use it to literally fly over obstacles. But be careful – in some places where there is a lot of dark energy, the bird may go crazy and attack you, revealing another funny ending.
Main problem Reventure, which is especially relevant for some of our readers is how the game looks. This is not even pixel art, but the most terry “pixels” that you could only imagine – just look at the screenshots. I admit, I also started playing through it with apprehension – it was hard to imagine how one could play this. But it’s okay, I got involved and got sincere pleasure, which I wish for you too. Reventure although she looks extremely old-fashioned, her ideas, humor, and self-irony are very fresh.
Pros: original concept; many ways to complete the game; variability in passing.
Cons: the game looks like an old-fashioned hello from the distant past.
