Revita, pixel art roguelike review for Nintendo Switch and PC

There Revita review put us in touch with the latest exponent of a subgenre, roguelikes that are often characterized by some degree of consistent challenge and the perverse appeal of one-off gameplay: a progression inevitably carried out in the context of a single venture. , when the game is over, it wants to start over.

Developed by the talented pixel artist BenStar, alias Benjamin Kiefer, the game focuses everything on this concept, but tries to enrich it with some new aspects on the balance and unlockables front: even if we start from scratch on each try in terms of statistics, we’ll probably be able to pick a different weapon and randomly select more. We will trust that we will achieve the upgrade.

history and structure

This Main hero Revita is a blue-haired boy struggling to get his memories back, apparently stolen by a villain who lives atop a spooky bell tower. Starting from a mysterious metro station that we can beautify and enrich by spending the resources we earn in each of our trials from time to time, our task will be to climb the tower and clean it from the existing enemies.

An elevator will take us to several levels. procedural system This will shuffle monsters and resources from time to time, creating unique and random patterns that can be lucky or unlucky: sometimes we’ll be blessed with the presence of lower league opponents as well as upgrades. offensive capacity, other times it will really seem like everyone is against it, destiny first.

Standard opponents (over a hundred!) serve only as a preparation for a collision with the six. boss, the real heroes of the game. In these cases, we will have to fight monstrous creatures who wear a mask similar to the Enchanted City’s Faceless, but with very different shapes, behaviors, and abilities that inevitably need to be learned and memorized in order to survive and continue in the conflict. climb..

Real progress In Revita it is our own experience, repeating everything over and over to learn from one’s mistakes, to understand what is the best approach to a particular enemy, and then move forward to overcome the most difficult obstacle and encounter another, trying not to lose clarity due to the inevitable repetition of the action.

gameplay

This is why the Revita structure takes the form of a classic tower with a degree of difficulty that gets harder as you climb, albeit clear of the many random elements that characterize every venture and therefore make things easier or often more difficult. in terms of gameplay The game is a two-dimensional action shooter where you aim with the right analog stick.

This control system Try to meet the precision and responsiveness needs of the experience by assigning the fast sprint to the left trigger and the jump to the left dorsal by default, when firing with the right trigger and right dorsal activates any custom weapon equipped. This scheme takes some practice to get used to, but you can customize the controls if you want and assign the jump to the regular B button for a more classic setting, but it’s less performant during intense stages.

As we mentioned above, one of the few freedoms that will be given to us in every new game is to choose. weaponry Among the seven unlockable weapons we will use, varying in power, frequency of fire, range and type. They range from classic pistols to machine guns, from rifles to lasers, to rocket launchers. However, damage, speed and range are brutally balanced, so there is no better instrument than another.

It all depends on what we find along the way to improve the character and his equipment, but also upgrade system it was always set up to be a compromise. To open mystery chests or buy items from vendors, we’ll actually need to use hearts as currency, which makes up our health gauge, thus abandoning resistance in favor of (possible!) Upgrading the attack.

Thus, games are turned into a strategic way in which we must carefully consider when to spend our life points in search of a possible improvement, perhaps because we are still in the early stages of climbing and even the bosses are largely at hand. and when to give up upgrade very expensive, instead trying to maintain the greatest possible resistance to damage to which we will inevitably suffer.

After a few dozen tries, the Revita formula was confirmed to be pretty solid and well thought out, the obvious result of some balancing and finishing work the author did as it should have been during early access on Steam, but it’s still in progress. a greater sense of insistence on the goodness of the loot the higher you go up in the tower.

graphics and sound

BenStar’s talent as a pixel artist is evident in Revita, and although the author makes heavy use of “jump” in animations, the end result is truly impactful and inspiring, and there is no drop in quality during the teen’s long passage. Main hero. Many enemies and bosses actually have an attractive design consistent with the stylistic choices made for the game. graphic your game.

Of course, the levels themselves serve because of their procedural nature: at the end of the day, they are simply empty rooms, the contours of which change according to the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe tower in which we find ourselves, but do not spare any big surprises. and therefore in the service of action, nothing more. Instead it’s really perfect soundit stays there for a long time thanks to the music that hits the head immediately and the repetitive nature of the game.