Revita (Switch) Review

Developer: Benstar

Publisher: Dear Villagers, Doyoyo Games

Release date: March 3rd, 2021

Price: $16.99

Platform: Windows/Steam, Switch (reviewed)

Many years ago, a wise man once told me to “do push-ups until you learn your lesson.” When pressed on how many push-ups that would be, he replied, “I haven’t decided yet.” That accurately describes BenStar & Dear Villagers, Revita’s approach to the player. You see, Revita is a “roguelite” game. You can do things more or less your own way and more or less in your own order, but still have to meet the game's various challenges to move to the next area. This gets a bit interesting as you don’t get a lot of direction from the game or the (very) minimal story. This leads to a lot of trial and error, or more specifically “learning by dying.”

Your POV character is a boy who for some reason has blue hair. Waking up in a subway car (Erik calls this Monday.) he has to explore the area and meet its challenges before defeating a boss defending another subway station to access another train to reach the next section of a vast clock tower. Along the way, you meet various characters who can help you to varying degrees. There is a story, but you more brush against it rather than follow it. Its purpose isn’t to stoke your fantasy life, it's to give you some (vague) sense of direction.

Most interestingly, as your progress you will be able to purchase various relics or improvements but instead of collecting gems, gold, unicorn droppings or whatever that can be spent on items, Revita forces you to use your life points to in a manner akin to organ harvesting. Metaphorically, selling a kidney to get what you need forces you to make wise decisions. If you choose poorly, you can easily find yourself unable to progress. For example, in one session, I tried to blast my way through by spending points on offensive measures. This left me with a “glass jaw” and I died when something sneezed on me. Bonus, my 12 year old “assistant” predicted this outcome, saying “That’s NOT a good idea” before playing the game himself.

This better work, I traded a kidney for it.

As is fashionable these days, Revita uses a “retro” pixelated art style. This is far from terrible, but in my mind is becoming tiresome. Having said that, the visuals are all nice and clear. With well executed character sprites, varying lighted stages and detailed backgrounds, a highly competent game, just not that innovative.

Level design is very well done as is the audio. Both are well customized to each level, matching the mood of the area and its resident boss.

Controls are good, but as you have to move and aim at the same time within the close confines of a clock this can be a steep hill to climb, and this hill just gets steeper as you move deeper into the game. I also note younger thumbs are mush better at this sort of control setup as my assistant was able to get a lot farther than I was, which accounts for the full month it took to review this title. On that note, there is a lot of playability here as you adjust tactics and it has got some replay ability value as you can approach each game a bit differently.

Bottom line, BenStar’s Revita is impressive. While most of this has been done before Revita checks all the boxes and manages to add a couple of genuinely original touches. My compliments to the designers. That said, difficulty wise it’s a tall hill to climb and if you are looking for a fluffy casual game this might be more of a struggle than you are looking for.

The Good

Excellent design and execution
Innovative economy
Special shout-out to the audio crew.
Challenging

The Bad

It’s all been done before
(very) Minimal story
Too Challenging for some