Developer: Cococucumber
Publisher: Cococucumber
Platforms: PS4, Xbox One, PC, Switch
Tested on: Switch
Riverbond – Review
Ready to get going in a charming voxel-based dungeon crawler that doesn’t require much of an effort? Well, Riverbond is sure to offer you some laidback fun times in a cute look with colorful 3D voxel-based graphics which makes it look just like Minecraft. The game offers some great easy gameplay which mostly is based on some mindless combat combined with some repetitive tasks to complete in each level. The game has quite a low difficulty, meaning it offers not much of a challenge, but is easily playable by almost everyone because of this.
Story
Riverbond only has a background story about a knight that has imprisoned the leaders of the Eight Worlds which has caused chaos, draughts, and disarray in the beautifully hand-crafted worlds of Riverbond. Sadly, this story is only read in the description at digital stores as nothing of this story is found in the game itself. In the main game mode, named “Play”, there are nine areas that you can choose to play. Each of these areas will consist of a set of levels. In these levels, you will get tasks like eliminating a number of enemies, activate a number of objectives, or finding a key. When you’ve completed the task in a level, the portal to the next level will open. The last level of an area contains an oversized boss. If you’ve defeated this boss, you‘ll have completed the area, and you can choose a new one to play. This stays the same throughout the whole game, so the game doesn’t really offer a lot of variety.
Graphics
The graphics are definitely not high-end in this game, but they’ve used a 3D variant of voxel-based graphics in a beautiful way. The landscapes are very colorful in each level and all the characters and enemies have a cute and friendly design. As a bonus, you’ll find lots of cute skins for your own character to be what you want to be. You can play as a human, but also as vegetables, donuts, foxes or whatever you can think of. There are many skins to be found and many look quite funny. You can switch your skin each time you enter a new level.
Sound
Each area will have its own theme song. These themes are well orchestrated and sound pretty good. When you are in a level for a long time, it could get annoying but that will depend on your own feelings. Most of these themes sound quite calm, just as the game is played, in a pretty calm way.
Gameplay
Riverbond is a dungeon crawler with some relatively easy gameplay. The gameplay of this Dungeon crawler mostly consists out of hacking and slashing through obstacles and enemies. The difficulty of this game is pretty low as each level doesn’t really offer a big challenge. Enemies are very easy to kill with only a few hits. Only the boss at the last level of each chapter offers quite a challenge with having a lot of health, a high damage output and requiring use of some tactics to beat him.
To start playing the game with a good knowledge of the gameplay, you can follow a tutorial directly from the main menu. This tutorial will fully explain all the controls you can use. There are two types of weapons you can use in this game, melee and ranged weapons. The melee weapons play very straightforward with one button to swing your weapon, which you can also hold to perform a charged attack. The ranged weapons play in a completely different way as it will make you switch to a twin-stick playstyle, meaning you’ll need to aim around you with the right stick while walking with the left stick. In melee mode, you won’t use the right stick very much. You can also perform a special attack that will hit all enemies within quite a wide range of yourself. This special attack will recharge over time after you’ve used it. When you travel around these areas, you’ll find chests full of new skins and weapons. Each weapon will have its own power, style of attack and swing speed. These weapons can vary from normal weapons like swords and guns to lollipops and ice creams. The combat basically consists out of button mashing the swing button, or holding the shoot button and wrecking your opponents. Most of the time, using any tactics is unnecessary, only with bosses, as said before.
Many levels will consist of islands that seem to be floating way up in the air. There are no (invisible) borders around the edges of these islands so it’s very easy to walk or jump around at the edge of the island and falling down to oblivion. You’ll instantly respawn with a full health bar, and you lose no lives or anything like that. You can just keep on playing with not a care in the world, making it an easy game to keep on playing while dying but still winning at the end. Another funny thing is that anything that comes across your path can be destroyed, like boxes, trees grass and more.
Aside from the normal “Play” game mode, there is a mode that’s called King’s Garden. When you start this mode, you will be dropped into a garden in front of a castle that’s full of NPCs walking around. All your skins are walking around among these NPCs. By interacting with them, you will equip their skin. Some extra skins can also be found here, but it’s not really explained what you can do here aside from wrecking everything and switching skins.
Conclusion
Riverbond is a very laid-back dungeon crawler that is easy to learn, and also easy to complete. The combat is not hard at all, with the exception of bosses, being a bit tougher. The levels are very colorful, the many skins you can equip look quite funny, and using lollipops and ice creams is quite funny as well. The game lacks a good story, and the tasks you need to complete in each level of an area get very repetitive after a while. Riverbond is quite an easy game, so it’s a game that could be played even by inexperienced gamers. The game can sure be a lot of fun to play, but its price is quite high, considering what the game offers.
No Comments