Revita is a twin-stick shooter roguelite that deals with heavy themes of loss, grief and mental health.
We play as a child who keeps trying to climb a clock tower hoping to regain their memory. Our first run is cut short by an unknown ghostly entity, who claims that with each attempt we lose a piece of ourselves, instead making him stronger.
From the half-lit atmosphere to the dialogue, Revita is packed with the feeling that something went really wrong, a lot of the people we meet when climbing the clock tower are already dead, and some of their quirks may reflect aspects of their mental health, like the Tinkerer, who refuses to stop working even mid-conversation.
These themes are also carried by the bosses, which are named after stages of grief, further hinting that the player character may have lost more than their memory.
We soon understand what the unknown figure at the beginning said as we climb the tower, almost everything in the game is paid with your own life. Hearts can be used to buy items, open chests, upgrade items and can also be sacrificed for stronger powers. The tower isn’t content with only taking a mental toll on whoever attempts to climb it, it also takes some of their life too.
The player does get a healing system like in Hollow Knight, with the possibility of increasing their max health if they do really well. This leads to a rhythm constantly trying to play perfectly so more life can be gambled away on better items, which creates a really interesting and adaptive difficulty layer. Can you clear the next boss with half a heart left, or are you going to leave that chest unopened?
As far as roguelites go, Revita is an endurance test, the runs are quite long and the player has to go linearly through the areas, so randomly stumbling upon the exit isn’t a possibility. This adds to what we are told in the beginning, climbing the tower is meant to be grueling, and each region has more than 10 floors that the player will have to ascend.
To help with that, the player can unlock permanent items which will start with them on their next runs, giving the game a layer of meta progression outside of each climb.
The game features a substantial amount of accessibility options for those who want to tweak their experience, from aim assist to making the game either slower or faster, so anyone can pick it up and play. The game is also set to get a 2.0 rework soon, which will add a huge amount of features and quality-of-life systems.
Revita has a lot of content for a roguelite fan to sink their teeth into, and players with the determination to last for a full run will find a really competent bullet hell twin-stick shooter awaiting them.
Revita is available on Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows (through Steam).
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