Developer: Estelion
Publisher: Estelion
Platforms: iOS, PC
Tested on: PC
Ratventure Challenge – Review
Ratventure Challenge, developed by Estelion, is a casual bridge building simulation game comprised of six different worlds and 72 unique levels. In this game, you’ll be guiding two crazy rats to the chunks of cheese but beware, the bridge isn’t always sturdy. The PC version of Ratventure Challenge is a mobile port of Ratventure Challenge HD, which was released for iOS earlier this year.
Story
Once upon a time, there were two rats in deep sleep. Both noses wiggling left and right while they grunted happily here and there. Softly, they start to nibble on invisible cheese only to wake up shortly after. Looking at every corner in their small little den, they soon realize that it was just a dream. A light bulb appeared and they plotted a genius plan to gain access to unlimited amounts of cheese.
Since Ratventure Challenge does not offer an actual narrative in-game, except for the fact that two crazy rats dream of an unlimited amount of cheese, this is the best I can do.
Graphics
While the graphics are fairly adorable, they do resemble visuals of children’s books. Don’t let these visuals fool you however as the gameplay is unforgiving. On top of that, the two rats you’ll be building bridges and other constructions for, share some visual similarities with Laurel and Hardy. Except the game does not offer any kind of humor other than these far-fetched references which I could have misplaced somehow.
Sound
The ambiance sound is fine in general but it is certainly not something to be overly excited about as it is an instrumental sound on a continuous loop. The sound design of the mice is something entirely different. Instead of sounding like actual mice, their grunting sound a lot more like Beavis and Butthead which feels completely misplaced in a puzzler bridge builder in which you play as two rodents chasing cheese.
Gameplay
The game offers no tutorial in the first few levels but it does offer a visual tutorial which explains the basics of the game. This visual aid is sufficient enough to explain the gameplay to literally anyone, regardless of age and language.
As for the gameplay, you need to guide two rats to the chunks of cheese that are somehow “floating” in the levels by building wooden bridges with a mouse click. In the early levels, you’ll be able to accomplish this fairly fast but the difficulty does ramp up quickly. Annoyingly placed sawblades will destroy your bridges if you don’t pay too much attention, thus you will need to place every piece strategically. To do this, you can use the help of frogs and other frog-like creatures to balance the construction you’ve built while gravity does whatever it does best.
This brings me to the physics of the game as these are fairly amazing. Many times, the frogs do their best to balance the structure but the weight of your rats need to be calculated as well. Miscalculation happens more often than you’d like to think which causes the structure to become unbalanced, causing it to collapse when it has been mauled by the sawblades or the construction simply tips over to one side. This forces the player to redo the level from scratch once more. While the trial-and-error feature is a large part of the game, it can be frustrating especially when you follow the hints provided by the developer. These hints do not specifically tell you how to place the bridge but it shows how you can build the structure from the start, until the very end. Retracing every step is tedious work and almost impossible but it does help you to navigate through the harder levels.
As I mentioned before, the difficulty ramps up fast and the learning curve is quite steep due to the many challenges earlier levels provide. Add the fact that the triangles you can make have a certain restriction and the game becomes significantly harder mostly due to the gravity at play. This certainly shows that the game falls into the puzzler category more than it being a casual bridge builder.
Also mentioned is the fact that the PC version of the game is a mobile port of Ratventure Challenge HD, an iOS game released earlier this year. This however is not noticeable at a first glance because the game plays fairly well. A dead giveaway to it being a port is mainly the menu UI, as well as the lack of resolution options.
Conclusion
Compared to other games from the same genre, Ratventure Challenge offers great challenges from the very start but it never excels in other features such as sound design and interactive visualization. Without a memorable narrative, the game feels mid casual at best but remains a great game for those craving challenges.
Note: Unfortunately the game is not without flaws. There has been no bugs nor glitches that I can report but I have been receiving an excessive amount of “appcrashes” which I have not taken into account when scoring the game. There have been others reporting issues and while the developer does offer support in some sense, it can take a while.
Ratventure Challenge - Review,
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