Riverbond is a top-down hack n’ slash game. With nine different levels, tons of different avatars to collect, and lots of objectives to complete there’s certainly quite a bit to do in this game. Don’t even get me started on the variety of weapons, characters, and more. Will this game end up in the great pile of Switch indies which should be in your library? Let’s find out!

Developer: Cococucumber

Publisher: Cococucumber

5 Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $24.99

Gameplay

Gameplay can be easily summed up with the common objective of, beating up enemies to move to the next section. With every section in a level there is an objective to complete. For example, sometimes you will be taking out every enemy on the map, other times you will have to find a specific item, and more! Every once in a while, there is a mini-boss that will be holding the specific item you need to obtain. Naturally, you must defeat it to then obtain the item in question. There are of course enemies trying to stop you and attacking and defeating them is crucial to success. I enjoyed doing the different objectives and being able to explore the worlds in Riverbond. Exploration allows you to find different weapons to use and led me to find new character skins which provided nice aesthetic changes

Weapons in Riverbond come in a huge variety of styles. From a regular little sword to the Reddit upvote button, this game has it all. You can find weapons in chests, and then equip them to use for the rest of the level you find them in. I could tell that some of the weapons were added in just for the ridiculousness of it, and I love it. Being able to destroy enemies with Hulk fists was certainly a fun experience, who doesn’t want to HULK SMASH! Short range weapons can be used with almost no delay, whereas longer range weapons do more damage but have a longer wind up process. I, personally, used the short range weapons as I felt they did the most damage in the smallest amount of time.

Now I can scratch my enemies to death!

One interesting aspect of the game was the plethora of characters you could use. From a piece of bacon to Shovel Knight, the options are absurd and wonderful. Most characters are found by opening chests scattered across the different maps in the game. From there you can enter “Kings Garden” which is a hub where all the skins roam around freely, simply find the skin in question and use it! The only problem I had is locating a certain one to use, since all of them (even the ones you haven’t unlocked) are roaming around the garden it can sometimes be annoying to locate a specific character you want to use.

Look at all those characters!

The bosses are the highlight of this game. Each level has a climactic boss fight to conclude it and if you can do so in five minutes, you will get a nice boost in points to rack up that high score. Perfect for the score chasers out there! Every boss a mechanic that makes them unique too. For example, one particular boss may have a protective shield to repel you from doing any more damage to them, while another will knock you back massively if they hit you. The bosses really got me excited because I never really knew what to expect of them and this is 100% down to the fact they were all completely unique. Unfortunately, they weren’t difficult though. As to why, well let’s talk about that now.

Not Everything Is Perfect

There were really only two things that did turn me away from the game. The first was how easy the levels felt, without them ever getting harder. When your health depletes to zero, you respawn back to your last checkpoint, but you have an infinite amount of respawns and no time limit to getting through the levels. Why have a system like this in place without punishment! Sure, for bosses there was a small bonus for defeating them in five minutes, but the rewards for doing so just didn’t seem like enough.

Getting KO-ed felt more like a mild annoyance than something that was actually worth worrying about. I feel like a difficulty option with limited lives could really spice up the gameplay a lot more. It would definitely lead to more strategy rather than just aimlessly running into danger because “I have infinite lives so I don’t have to worry all that much.”

I’m surrounded! Notice the lack of panic in my voice?

The other big problem I have with the game is the lack of variety in enemies. Every level boiled down to an enemy with a close range attack and one that would shoot or launch a projectile at you. After a while, the levels felt very rinse and repeat. The process being; taking out enemies, completing the objective, and eventually taking on the boss. I feel like adding some spice to the enemies could benefit Riverbond massively. If the same variety in the bosses was in the rest of the game, it would be a much better experience for sure.

Riverbond is a fun game. The hack n’ slash action was enjoyable, and I will 100% be playing this in my spare time. The weapon and avatar variety made for some cool side objectives to try and find everything in the levels. However, it is far from perfect, and the lack of difficulty in levels and not enough variety in enemies hindered the game a lot. Despite that, I think Riverbond is still a good experience. I’d definitely recommend it to people who enjoy the genre for sure.

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