Reventure

As a guy who produces a weekly series about old school endings, I think it's fair to say that I love to see how a game concludes. I suspect the same is true for Pixelatto, the developers behind the wickedly inventive new platforming game Reventure. This is a side-scroller where the object is to explore the kingdom in hopes of uncovering all one-hundred endings. From small to big to just plain crazy, you won't want to stop playing until you've seen them all. And that's not a bad thing, because I'm here to tell you that Reventure is one of the best games of 2019.

This is the all-too-familiar story of a brave hero adventuring out on his own in order to save the princess from an evil monster known as the Dark Lord. At least, that's the logline. In reality, Reventure spans more than one hundred years of life and death seen through the eyes of one truly unlucky family tree. Each session tells a complete story with a definite ending, even if that ending involves being blown up by your own bomb.

Unlike most adventure games, the goal isn't to rescue the princess and save the day. You'll definitely want to get that ending to see what happens, but that's not the focus. The goal of this game is to try and find all one-hundred ways this game can end. It's almost like a scavenger hunt where the hero is purposely trying to find different gruesome ways to die. And not just die, but also interact with the world.

Let's use the sword you get at the beginning of the game as an example. You can obviously use it to kill bad guys and save the Princess, but you can also use it to murder a guard, stab this old guy, rob the local shop and even turn on the King. All four of those choices will immediately result in a completely different ending. Some of those choices will have long-lasting consequences for future generations, so fishing the lake in one run will clear out the deadly piranhas in the next.

It gets to the point where you're starting to look for different ways and combinations to end the game. That dragon is always underground waiting for you, so the fun is finding different ways to milk it for different endings. You can melt the shield onto your face, use a magical trinket to confuse the beast, sneak up from behind and scare it or maybe just let the Princess deal with it.

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This is how you start to look at the world. Reventure is less about the 2D platforming than it is scoping out new possible endings. The clever trick they pull is teasing you with other possibilities. Every time you find a different ending, you also see new ways to conclude the story. Investigating these new leads will take you deeper into the castle and reveal a larger part of the mystery. And best of all, hunting down these endings will help you memorize every nook and cranny of this large interconnected world.

One thing that helps is that you have almost every helpful item available to you at the start of every run. Aside from the sword we talked about earlier, you can also pick up a grappling hook, shovel, bomb, a bird and more. All of these items have important roles to play that will make traversing the world a whole lot easier, but they also weigh down our hero. Jumps you used to be able to make are out of reach, and that reduction in height only gets worse as you pick up more items. It can get to the point where the poor rescuer will get crushed by the weight of all the items, which I think we can all agree is not a good way to die.

And it's not just that it has the most endings of the year, but also that it has one of the very best. After all the humor, pathos and gruesome deaths, the game somehow finds a way to top itself in the final act. This is an immensely satisfying conclusion that is not just long, but also offers a shocking twist you might not see coming. It's the perfect way to end a near-flawless action game, and I can't imagine anybody being disappointed by the finale of Reventure.

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I'm not going to mince words; I love this game. This is easily the best side-scrolling platformer of the year, perhaps the best since Axiom Verge in 2015. And it's not just because of the exciting conceit and morbid sense of humor, but also because of the fast and tight gameplay. The world they've created is fun to explore, especially with all of the shortcuts and secrets. A lot of the same endings can be tackled in completely different ways, which gives you a real sense of being in control over your fate. I'm impressed that the game doesn't fall into the usual traps of having cheap hits and precision problems. Even without the fun gimmick, this would still be a great platformer on its own merits.

Part of this is because of the world building it does. For what looks like a simple 8-bit game, there's a staggering amount of personality on display here. You start to learn more about this world and its various quirks through the one-hundred endings, and there's a hidden depth here that caught me by surprise. And that's true of this entire game. From beginning to end, I was amazed and delighted by its originality, execution and sense of humor. It's hard to believe that a game this polished came from a first-time developer.