Sometimes having a simple structure to your game does wonders for the experience. Case in point, Ring of Pain is a simple card game where you only worry about 5-6 controllable player stats and how to improve those to better take on enemies. It’s a game of choices but nothing skillfully driven beyond making those choices. Why can’t it be skillful? Well, it’s a game where the dungeon of cards changes randomly each time you play so prepping for the gameplay would just be impossible, as you truly must go with what you’re given and adjust along the way. Sometimes it ends up working out well, then sometimes not so much. It’s like going on a road trip without a map. Sure, you might have some direction to follow, but ultimately, you’re flying blind, and you can either accept that and enjoy it or panic and go home. Panic is no fun, so why not just fly blind and enjoy the trip?
Let’s! Revolution! from developers Buck and Antfood is just that type of gameplay. You’re given turned-over tiles like some cool game of Memory, and your character must traverse each tile, hoping that you don’t haphazardly land on an enemy, in your quest to find his royal lowness, take him down, and have a successful revolution. It’s simple in design, it has some cool stats you must juggle, and you can quickly play this game repeatedly with a smile on your face each time knowing you’re going to get the same simplicity but in a different way.
So, put on your revolution cap, and let’s go knock down some doors to this review.
A story to die for
An evil king controls the world. You have had enough of him. You want to start some shit, and so you do. Your quest to chase a snobby, self-centered king throughout different lands is the name of the story with Let’s! Revolution!. You have a rebellion of different characters from various lands at your disposal to achieve the mission of overthrowing the king. It’s a simple story that fits the bill every single time you play it, and it works no matter who you play during gameplay.
The story is good enough to build up the motivation to take down the king. Having different characters at your disposal with unique stories and motivations to overthrow the king makes for different gameplay each time you fire this game up. You can choose from the following:
- Trooper/Charger – Brutish Phloxian warriors that live out in the desert land. They allow their fists to do the talking.
- Shadow/Hunter – They are assassins that use stealth and mobility to track down the king. More passive than the Phloxian.
- Oracle – These two types of characters focus more on logic and visionary abilities to take down baddies than more direct or stealth attacks.
Each character comes from their own background and has their own reason for taking down the king. Do you need more to the story than that? It’s a playful story with playfully cute characters, even when they’re incredibly violent. They don’t need much explanation to cause a revolution. Again, it’s a simple type of game with simple pieces to make up the whole.
Maybe not all of it is simple
Now, as much as I’m crowing about Let’s! Revolution!’s simplicity, it does have a complicated backend that accelerates and extenuates the complication the devs wanted to serve up. The initial gameplay design is to have whatever character you choose jump around tiles to reveal if they’re on the right path to finding the king or running into enemies. That’s an easy gameplay concept to pick up on.
The first bit of complication comes in the form of dealing with a variety of enemy types. Each enemy has their own brand of attack, and each enemy has their own number of hearts. The latter of the bunch is important because it dictates how many times you must hit an enemy before eliminating them. Getting back to the former, the enemy types come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Some enemies are one-hit wonders that require you to smack them once and they’re done. Other enemies require multiple hits, sometimes two-step processes to eliminate them. For example, at some point, you’ll run into a guard that is in a flying machine. You must knock them out of the machine with two hits then deal with their one-hit self parachuting down to the map. You’ll also have enemies that alert other enemies of your presence, such is the case with an enemy soldier that carries an alert tuba around. When they see you, they blow on the tuba, which reveals another enemy on the map of tiles. The reason why that is bad is because all revealed enemies can attack at once. Killing the tuba guy is imperative.
The enemies work by an engagement meter below them. The meter varies from small to large, depending on the power of the enemy revealed. Going back to the tuba guy, they have 3-4 bars on their meter, which slowly go down as you move from tile to tile. When the meter hits zero bars, then the enemy reacts. In the case of the tuba guy, he blows on his tuba to reveal an enemy. If you have multiple enemies revealed on a set of tiles at once, then you’ve got to take care of them before their bars get to zero, which allows them to attack you at once. See? Complication. The joy of this game is to figure out which enemies you get to when and how you attack them. It’s not straightforward, but it’s a delight when it comes to the thickness of strategy within such a simple gameplay design.
The way you attack enemies depends on the character you have chosen at the beginning of the game. For me, I loved playing Trooper, one of the Phloxian warriors. He had a roundhouse attack that allowed me to knock out and reveal tiles surrounding him. This also allowed me to deliver multiple hits to enemies at once. His character type is your introductory character for the game, and it’s tough to go anywhere else other than him unless you’re looking for a challenge. I didn’t enjoy any of the other characters beyond him, as I nailed down his abilities well and executed them properly. Beyond the roundhouse, Trooper also can hold knives, axes, spears, and bow/arrows. Each additional attribute or weapon has a certain distance it can be used regarding tile placement. For example, the axes can only be used with three tile rows that surround Trooper. In the case of a bow/arrow, that must be angular and finite in its distance as well. Each weapon you pick up or attribute you acquire allows you to cover a certain distance of tiles, which provides another thick layer of strategy in this game. It’s entertaining and this style of design with weaponry or offensive power works within the confines of this game’s rules.
Now, how do you acquire said weapons? Well, you do so by getting to shop blocks on the tile board. These shops are hidden until found on a tile. Shops in the game include:
- Chovy’s Potions – this is a shop that can extend stamina and the heart meter of your character. It also helps with secondary weapon replenishings, such as bows and daggers.
- Gemma’s Gym – this shop is meant to work on your permanent attributes like axes and roundhouse attacks. It also offers up attributes such as earning more coins (the currency in the game to spend in shops) and other weird attributes like upgrading weapons and melee levels.
- The Smith – This is where you can pick up new weapons and offensive attributes, such as uppercuts, frenzy, and intimidation powers.
These shops add a bit more depth to how you play the game and more importantly how many ways you can approach the game. Knowing that random items can appear in the shop and making an informed decision on what you should be getting to complete the game is a brilliant additional strategy piece that makes the gameplay more interesting and enjoyable if not intellectually stimulating.
To further the depth of this simple gameplay design, the game also provides you with gems that unlock attributes and additional characters. Even if you fail during a gameplay session, if you snag a gem from a treasure chest the game allows you to keep it and use it to unlock the next big thing. Trust me, there are plenty of unlockables in this game, so you’re not going to be bored playing it repeatedly to collect these gems and expand the initial gameplay offerings.
Should you complete a match with a character, the game opens a new game+ mode. This mode continually keeps adding an additional plus to its name after every completion. The more pluses, the more challenging the adventure becomes. The game just wants you to keep playing and will entice you with these types of ‘upgrades’ to ensure that you’re coming back for more. As of right now, Trooper is on NG+2 mode and it’s quite a challenge, but I’m enjoying every second of the gameplay.
Now, are there any downers to this game? Well, I think at times the difficulty becomes wildly unfair, especially with a little wizard enemy that spins off to another side of the tile map when you hit them. Why that is frustrating is that sometimes you simply cannot reach them in time before they attack. You have no chance. That doesn’t happen every time, as this character’s movement is random, but it’s enough to curse a bit. I think some of the tougher and more unique characters can get out of hand when it comes to gameplay fairness. The previously mentioned wizard is just the worst of the bunch. To even out that unfairness, the game moves quickly, so it’s not like you’re going to have to climb a huge mountain to get back into the groove of the game.
Another issue I had with the game is how wildly different each player character is outside of Trooper. While I tried nearly all the characters available and even unlocked a bunch, I felt like they could never quite live up to Trooper’s simplicity and fun. I didn’t really push myself to go play the others as they bring a different more frustrating style of gameplay, especially if you’re used to a brutish blitz across tiles. I’m sure there will be plenty of gamers satisfied with their style and attribute differences, but I’m not that gamer. I wish the characters were a little bit closer in attacks to each other, but at the same time, I understand why they aren’t. You want more challenges and different ways to push players, so they make sense in that respect.
Overall, the gameplay is simple in design, complicated as you want it to be, and welcoming with replayability. This is the type of game that is equivalent to the movie The Goonies, where at any given time you can just sit down and enjoy it. As previously mentioned, it’s also like Ring of Pain, as I don’t need to play it, but I do want to play it.
Presentation
As serious as overthrowing a government can be, the animation and style of Let’s! Revolution! is playful and fun. The animation looks like it was hand-drawn, giving it a whimsical style and personality in its playfulness. It fits the bill drawn up for it and it works within the simplistic tone that its world carries with it. It’s pleasant and it works for this game.
On that sweet note, I think we should wrap this up now.
Conclusion
Let’s! Revolution! from developers Buck and Antfood is a simple game that has a complicated underbelly of strategy and asks gamers to make sophisticated choices. While the gameplay is short in its single follow-through, its replayability shows its longevity. While not all of its elements work, especially when it comes to character choice and sometimes random enemy attacks, it’s still a fun game to come back to when you are itching for a quick gaming experience.
