Reventure review

Reventure is kind of like the video game equivalent of Groundhog Day. It's a game where you begin your day seeking adventure, but no matter how that adventure ends you end up back in your bed ready to try once again. This isn't an entirely new game concept, but Reventure pulls off its loop-based gameplay in a clever and charming way that most other games don't.

Every day is a new day

The world of Reventure looks very much like traditional fantasy adventure games like The Legend of Zelda. You play as a hero who is seemingly destined to do great things, and you have to go out and find your destiny.

For the purposes of this game, you actually have many destinies. There's actually 100 to be exact, and reaching the end of any given one of them usually takes a matter of minutes--if not seconds--at the longest. As an example, early ends might involve you tripping over a rock outside of your house, or perhaps you might accidentally stab a wise old man with a sword you just found.

Endearing ends

Reventure delights in undermining the rules that usually govern fantasy game worlds, packing its modest universe with all sorts of ways to "complete" your adventure that you'd almost never find in any other game. Most of these endings also come with clever writing that manages to explain both how you reached your humorous conclusion and how or why you still restart the game from your bed in the very next scene.

Discovering all of the little ways you can reach an ending in Reventure is the core of the fun here. There's no deep combat or characters to dig into, but I think it's fair to say that finding some of the endings can feel like solving a satisfying puzzle. If you ever seem to be getting stuck though, the game may leave little hints around the world that you can pick up to help you find an ending you haven't completed yet.

Mobile meandering

Reventure is great fun, regardless of whether you're completing the endings you're expecting to find or stumbling across new, surprising ways to end your adventure. When you first start the game, you'll be making these discoveries constantly, but as time goes on you may find yourself wandering a little aimlessly or accidentally re-triggering endings you've already seen before. In these moments, Reventure is considerably less enjoyable.

For this mobile version, it's a little surprising that Reventure isn't a universal app, but that isn't a huge deal. The old-school pixel art scales up just fine on an iPad and feels completely natural to play on a larger screen.

The bottom line

Reventure is perhaps the most fun I've had with games featuring looping, repetitive gameplay. The writing is so good and the world is so tightly packed with fun and clever ways to end the game that you won't necessarily care that you're trudging through a lot of the same spaces over and over again. This can definitely wear thin over time, but not enough to keep you from wanting to find each and every ending it has to offer.