Restless Hero

Big thanks to Restless Corp for the chance to review this game. Follow the links on their website to get your hands on a copy on Steam / Xbox / Switch.

Restless Hero is a 2D platformer adventure game. Following Rick, our Restless Hero, on his mission to avenge his wife; Jumping and climbing, all while avoiding the abundance of enemies and traps. If this sounds like your kind of thing, check the trailer below.

First Impressions

The opening screen of this game was very simplistic and indicative of the 2D pixel art style of this game. Upon starting I was taken through a small opening story which just raised more and more questions about our vengeful hero. Then into the first level, I was left to figure out the few controls with no hints. Thankfully the game takes it slow on difficulty to start and the controls are really easy.

The graphics in this game immediately caught my eye as I noticed nice little details on the levels.

Story

The story starts out good. Set in the Dark Ages, during the witch-hunts, Rosa, your wife, gets accused of “sorcery and heresy” by the church inquisition and you get thrown into the deepest part of the castle dungeon for trying to defend her. From this there is a clear goal set. Escape and rescue your wife.

Unfortunately, that is as cohesive as the story gets. Working your way through the game doesn’t do much to explain any more of the story and the broken English in some of the text can make some things hard to follow.

Gameplay

The controls for this game are super easy. Consisting of moving left and right, dropping down or jumping to avoid obstacles and enemies, hugging walls to climb or slowly lower yourself down and finally you also have a button to use a power-up. You have a choice of 3, however, 1 of them is definitely more useful than the rest.

On each level there are 2 gold bars and varying amounts of green potions to collect, some of them more difficult to find than others. The first hidden bar I came across surprised me a little as I fell through a false wall. The gold bars and green potions you collect are primarily used to upgrade (add more uses) to your power-ups; as you only start with 1 use.

The first 10-15 levels can leave you a little disappointed on difficulty as they are a breeze. Especially if you actually use your limited-use power-up.

After this the difficulty increases slightly, still not too difficult but difficult enough to make you want to grab those little hearts and power-ups.

Graphics / Sound

The original and handcrafted soundtrack this game brings adds a great sombre tone to this dark dungeon. It does get quite repetitive but it is a nice little addition to set the games mood.

If I had 1 point I found to stand out most in the game it would be the art style, it really adds to the retro feel of this game. At some parts of the levels I would find myself stopping to admire the pixel art or little hidden details that were included. Or how walking through the dangling chains interacted with them. Just adding a lovely little touch to the game.

Quality / Replayability

The early levels did begin to make me question continuing with the game as it didn’t answer any of the questions you have about what is happening and there was no real difficulty to them. But once I finished a level and the perfectionist in me saw that I had missed a golden bar? Preposterous, that is when I found that there was more to this game than meets the eye, re-playing the level to find the hidden areas.

Completing the game did not bring the satisfaction I had hoped, as it didn’t really answer any of the questions that I had. Completing the game again for the alternate endings didn’t quench my need for satisfaction either and still left me with things unanswered.

For the price, $6.99 / £5.29, it is a good little game to play, with solid and smooth gameplay. It is certainly not a perfect game but for a small development team it is a solid game. I got around 4 hours of game time on this and feel the price would probably be better suited around the $3.99-$4.99 mark.