Reviver Review: Love That Lasts a Lifetime
Sometimes finding true love takes time.
Reviver, a narrative puzzle game from Developer Cotton Game, tells a story of love and it’s one that takes place over a lifetime. Follow two friends as they quarrel, laugh, drift apart, fall in love, grieve and more as they grow up in a beautiful, complicated world. Make choices to change the story and watch as even the smallest detail affects the world around them.
Love At First Sight
In Reviver, you switch between both Felicia and Carlos, the two protagonists of this unique love story. Starting in 1908 and eventually ending in 1962, Reviver follows these characters as they move through the many stages of their lives. In 1908, young Felicia and Carlos meet for the first time and it’s Carlos’ interest in ancient history and Felicia’s longing for excitement that has them become fast friends. Even as the couple drift apart, there's always a grand sense of adventure that keeps them close to one another.
The majority of Reviver’s gameplay consists of gathering items that can be used to progress the story. Sometimes items can be used as is, or they may need to be combined with other items. You can seamlessly switch between Felicia and Carlos’ points of views and both characters share the same inventory. For example, if Carlos picks up a compass in his room, you can switch to Felicia and still have access to it. It’s a unique mechanic and one that adds a little extra challenge, especially when you start to pick up more and more items.
Time After Time
One of the other main things that you can do to progress things along in the game is change what year it is in the story. By dragging along the bottom of the screen you can move between years for both characters. When moving to a new chapter you may only have one year to choose from, but the more items you collect and the more puzzles you solve, the more years that will appear on the timeline to explore.
Decisions that you make each year will directly affect the other years before or after it. For example, if Felicia puts toxic berries on a cake one year and then you move a year forward, you’ll find an article about the incident and you’ll see the direct consequences that occurred. That will give you the hint that you may have done something terribly wrong, and you’ll have the opportunity to go back a year or two to fix it. Oftentimes Reviver will force you into making a mistake on purpose, so that you’ll be equipped with the knowledge you need to go back and change it. Moving between years and collecting items is fun at the beginning of the game, but by the time you reach the ending, sometimes juggling three or four years of events for both Carlos and Felicia all at the same time, can get a bit exhausting.
One is Loved Because One is Loved
While gameplay for Reviver can get frustrating at times, the game does offer a hint system in the form of butterflies. Sometimes when solving a puzzle, it isn’t obvious what that puzzle solution has done to affect the timeline of the story. When this happens, white butterflies appear wherever there are new items to be found. This is very helpful, especially when something changes in a room that you’ve looked in a dozen of times and seen no changes. The problem is that, other than helping with noticing changes around the world, these butterfly hints are useless.
And Reviver has some complicated puzzles that I would have killed to have a few hints to make solving them easier. More than just picking up items and combining them together, Reviver is filled with other mini puzzle games to solve that will also progress the story. Think of the sliding puzzle “Klotski” where you are trying to get a large wooden block out of a maze by moving the smaller blocks around and out of the way. Just like this universally recognizable puzzle, you’ll find other familiar games in Reviver. Aside from the puzzles you’ve likely seen before, there are also some puzzles that simply offer no explanation. When this happened, I found myself clicking around randomly hoping to discover how to solve them by sheer luck. This happened a handful of times and caused a lot of frustration. Thankfully, I was so invested in seeing how the story played out that I persevered.
Reviver is very fun to play most of the time, but some of its puzzles do feel convoluted and difficult to solve. Players that prefer easier puzzles or more helpful hints may find themselves giving up before they’ve reached the ending. Those that make it to the end will be rewarded with a dramatic, romantic story of a love between two best friends that takes place over a lifetime.
Breakdown
Game: Reviver
Developer: Cotton Game
Publisher: Cotton Game
Availability: PC
Game Length: 3-4 hours
Reviewed on PC
Pros:
Beautiful art style
Engaging story with great characters
Unique timeline hopping game mechanics
Cons:
The hint system isn’t very useful
Some puzzles feel very convoluted and frustrating
Minor errors in the English translation
Final Thoughts
Reviver has a lovely story and unique mechanics that make it well worth a one-time play through. If you’re a fan of puzzle games, there are plenty of puzzles to solve here, but if you’re looking for something simple and calming, it might not be quite as relaxing as you think. There are also some minor issues with the game’s language - some English translations are a little off - but that is a very small detail that can be ironed out with a patch or two.
Review by Becca Smith