Reventure

What it is

Reventure opens with the most familiar premise imaginable: a king sends a Link-like hero to rescue a kidnapped princess. Within minutes, the game reveals its actual structure — that premise is just one of over 100 distinct outcomes scattered across a small, densely designed overworld, and death, comedic failure, or simply refusing the quest entirely are all legitimate, achievement-tracked endings in their own right. Developed and published by Pixelatto, it left Early Access and released in full on 4 June 2019 at NZD 19.24. Its review corpus, 2,422 in English, sits at a strong Very Positive 92.8% (2,248 to 174), and reading through it reveals a game whose reputation rests on real, specific design craft rather than novelty alone.

More mechanical depth than the joke premise suggests

The corpus consistently pushes back against dismissing Reventure as a shallow gag. "This is not a parody RPG, instead what you will find is a surprisingly deep puzzle platformer metroidvania," writes one reviewer, describing the actual process of learning "the layout of the world and the item locations, trying out new combinations to reach every possible ending." That depth has a specific mechanical anchor: "the more items you collect, the lower you jump," one reviewer explains, "making which items you pick up important choices, as you open up some areas" while closing off others. That trade-off transforms what could have been a simple checklist of joke deaths into a genuine puzzle about sequencing and prioritisation — reviewers describe real satisfaction in working out which combination of items and routes unlocks a specific, previously unseen ending.

A game built for sharing

Several reviewers specifically highlight Reventure as unusually well-suited to shared or co-viewing play, distinct from most single-player puzzle games. "I played this with my boyfriend, streamed over Discord, seeing as we can't see each other due to lockdown," writes one reviewer, crediting the format with making an already fun game "more fun to play with someone" watching and suggesting ideas in real time. That's a specific, credible account of the game's design working well for a use case its structure — short, joke-driven attempts that invite immediate retries and shared reactions — seems well suited to, even though it has no formal multiplayer component.

Comedy that lands for most, not all

Where the corpus shows real disagreement is comedic tone rather than mechanics. Many reviewers praise the writing specifically and at length — "the writing is excellent, soundtrack is enjoyable," writes one, hoping for a sequel; another calls the death sequences "the most realistic video game death I've ever seen" after simply tripping over a rock, delivered as a genuine compliment. But at least one detailed, otherwise fair-minded reviewer pushes back directly: "it thinks it's funnier than it is," they write, specifically describing the tone as having a "middle school sense of humor," while still acknowledging "a good deal of thought was put into the mechanics of the game." That's a useful, honest counterpoint — the mechanical praise in this corpus is close to unanimous, but the comedic tone that carries much of the actual content clearly doesn't land identically for every player.

A minor marketing mismatch

One further, more measured complaint concerns expectations set by the store page itself: "the description is a little misleading," one reviewer notes, "since on the surface it sounds more like a roguelite/action platformer style game with choices," when the actual experience is built almost entirely around searching for "100 different ways" to reach an ending. That's a mild but fair point for prospective buyers — Reventure is less a roguelite with meaningful run-to-run variation and more a fixed, denser-than-it-first-appears puzzle box designed to be picked apart methodically over repeated short attempts.

What the achievement data confirms about the completion curve

Reventure's own achievement data offers useful, specific confirmation of the "well-tuned difficulty" praise running through the corpus. Early ending-related achievements sit remarkably high — 83.6% and 82.1% for the two most-completed — before gradually descending through a real middle tier as endings become more obscure or require more elaborate item combinations to reach. What's most notable is the ceiling at the very top: the full-completion achievement, "Thank You For Playing," sits at 8.2%, a genuinely high number for a 101-achievement completionist milestone compared to the sub-2% full-completion rates this lane has documented in several other, similarly ambitious games. That's hard data behind the reviewer consensus that the game is "not too easy nor a short game" but also "not frustratingly hard" — a meaningful share of the playerbase actually pushes all the way through to full completion, which is a genuinely uncommon outcome for a 100-plus-ending game and a real point in favour of its design and pacing.

A completionist's warning worth taking at face value

It's worth returning briefly to the specific warning one reviewer gives fellow completionists: "may god help you if you are a completionist like me," they write, before immediately clarifying that the experience of chasing every ending was "very pleasant" rather than a genuine complaint. That's a useful, honest framing for anyone deciding how deep to go with this game — the achievement data confirms full completion is achievable and reasonably common, but reviewers are candid that getting there, particularly for the last handful of the most obscure or elaborately-gated endings, asks for real patience and a willingness to experiment methodically with item and route combinations rather than stumbling onto everything by chance.

Verdict

Reventure backs up its comedic premise with real, well-considered game design — a jump-height trade- off system that makes item collection a genuine strategic decision, and over 100 endings spread across a tightly built world that rewards patient exploration rather than padding for its own sake. Its humor won't land identically for every player, and the marketing undersells what kind of game it actually is, but the mechanical craft underneath both of those caveats is real, consistent, and worth experiencing — ideally with a friend watching along for the ride.