Introduction
Riverbond is a hack and slash style game that was developed by indie studio Cococucumber. It was released on PC and Consoles in June 2019.
Video Review
Review
Welcome to Riverbond, the beautifully crafted voxel world, where you are called upon to help the citizens of the world defeat all the evils that have popped up, and bring peace back to the land! There’s stories to find in each set of levels, but aside from that, the game is all about the gameplay as opposed to a story. This makes for a really fun action game, especially with multiple people!
When you start the game, you get to pick your level, in a Mega-Man like level select. You can sort of go in sequential order, but each level gets more and more difficult, though with the way the game is set up, this poses no issues at all. During each level, you go from map to map, each one having their own objectives that need to be cleared. These include killing all the enemies, or rescuing animals or citizens, or even destroying specific objects. I mean there’s a bit more variety than that, but it all boils down to the same thing.
As you work your way through each set of levels, you end up finding chests that give you one of six weapon archetypes. These end up being swords, maces, spears, guns, dual handed weapons, or hands to slap people with. I laughed hard when I got a Canadian Maple Leaf to slap people with. If you don’t get weapons, you instead get skins for your characters. So as you get to every new objective area in each level, you get to change your skin. I was always swapping out to be a different person. One second I was a lemon, then I was a burger, then I was a taco, then I was Shovel Knight. There were so many skins to unlock so you’re bound to find one you love!
As you progress through each area, you can find little checkpoints to activate that put you back to it when you die. If for some reason you never find one to activate, it was never an issue getting back to where you died, as the areas themselves aren’t that big. A few of them had a hidden area to find so it was always exciting to break everything down to its little voxel bits and explore fully, but most of the time it felt like a waste, so I’d end up just running through the areas to find the objectives, then move on.
When it comes to single player vs multiplayer, I prefered multiplayer. In single player, the enemies don’t get balanced for one person, whether that was in numbers or damage, so I was always battling through hordes by myself and dying constantly. It didn’t help that when you get hit, you get stunned a little so your attacks stop. When you die, the enemies don’t get their health back at least, so it wasn’t really an issue of jumping right back into the fray, and that includes boss fights. So it was just a matter of whittling away their health, as I respawned constantly.
In multiplayer, you can have up to three other people with you, as you run through the areas, destroying everything in sight, and just pummeling the enemies. It was a laugh and I had so much fun during the two levels that I played in couch co-op. The one thing this game severely lacks is online co-op. As an adult it’s just so hard to get people together for couch co-op nowadays, and if it had online play, I could’ve easily done it all in multiplayer. I believe in couch play, and if you have online multiplayer you should have local multiplayer, but it should also go the other way, especially with games like this.
Rating
Pros:
- Tons Of Skins
- Co-op Is A Blast
Cons:
- No Online Multiplayer
- Solo Play Is Boring And Not Balanced
Summary
As a co-op game, Riverbond is an absolute delight that I cannot recommend enough. But because I played ¾ of it in singleplayer, I lost a lot of what makes the game fun. Not to say it’s not a relaxing time, but I can’t recommend it in that mode. If I played it all with someone else, it would even have a higher score! So just be warned.
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Game & Developer Information
Developer/Publisher Website: Cococucumber
Developer/Publisher Socials: Twitter
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