The Adventure Pals, you’ll never look at a giraffe’s tongue the same way again.
I received this game in the August 2019 Humble Bundle, and I was really excited to play it, because the graphics and playstyle reminded me of Castle Crashers, which was super fun when my friends and I played it. The two games are made by different devs, however, the cover art just seemed super similar to me.
Either way, I had no regrets when I played The Adventure Pals. It might not have been as fun in comparison to Castle Crashers when thinking back to the co-op with my friends (I had nobody to co-op with me on this one when I’d played it at the time), but it’s still a funny game and worth it to play.
I did happen to stream it on Twitch and we had a good time with what the game threw at us.
- Developed by Massive Monster
- Published by Armor Games Studios
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FAQ
What is this page?
This is an in-depth critique of the game The Adventure Pals. I go all in with my review by picking apart the game, piece by piece. By doing this, I try to help not only the devs that created the games, but also future aspiring devs by giving my viewpoint on everything as an avid gamer, but please understand…
There may be spoilers.
How long does it take to beat The Adventure Pals?
Around 8.5-10.5 hours.
Title Screen
Background
This is not a static image–there is a certain sway to all the characters and imagery in the entire background so you can kind of see the goofy characters and the not so friendly ones based not only on their looks, but also movements. Pretty cool concept, considering they don’t move very much, but how they move speaks for their attitude toward you.
The art style has a sloppy, yet clean look. Not scribbly or anything like that. I mean, everything is in the lines, but it’s soft shading and maybe some spots look cell shaded, and not everything is blended that well in certain areas.
It’s not bad. It’s a cartoony lollygagging style, you could say, which fits with the in-game concept.
I do like how the first screen shows the full background with just the small scroll at the bottom, prompting you to press A. Then the next screen covers more of the bottom area of the background, hiding some characters.
Title Font
I love the signboard that the title rests on. Again, it’s all meant to be playful and…childish, you could say?
“The” is offset in the upper left in its own little scroll because it’s important to be there but not as important as the other words. “Adventure” is big and bold in yellow, which makes it stand out a lot more, basically telling you you’re going to be going on some kind of adventure, which is a nice play on game genre. And then of course there’s the “Pals” at the bottom and centered in red.
Can’t say I’m a fan of the font color, but it does match the kid’s shirt we’re playing as, so maybe that’s why they chose it? The color red just tends to be a bit sinister sometimes.
But I like the overall placement of the title and how they’ve displayed it.
Menu
Start Game
Obviously, you’ll be starting a new game here.
Options
There are three sections to choose from in the Options menu, and they are:
- Graphical Settings
- Controller
- Audio Settings
In the Graphical Settings, you can choose to enable/disable fullscreen, shaders, screen shake, and screen flash.
On the Controller Screen, you can simply see what all the controls are via images, instead of words. I actually thought this was pretty cool, but games need to be careful with doing this because some gamers might get confused on what certain images mean.
In-game tutorials will help out as well, if they exist, though.
In the Audio Settings, you have sliders for music and SFX, as well as an enable/disable for controller vibration.
Credits
If you’re curious to know how many people partook in creating this epic game.
Quit
When there’s no more adventuring to be done.
Gameplay
Achievements
There are 31 achievements.
Plot
Mr. B is kidnapping old people and turning them into hot dogs! It’s up to you and your best buds, Mr. Rock and Sparkles the Giraffe, to save the day. Leap, slash, and blast your way through increasingly madcap levels. Along the way you’ll help a whale regain confidence, take a side in the battle between toast and dinosaurs, and travel to a legendary sunken city to decide the result of a Pirate election.
Game Length
If you’re just looking to complete the game itself, then it might be around 8 hours.
But if you’re a completionist and want to tally up the time it’ll take you to complete all the achievements, have all levels at a score of A+, collect all the stamps, and have all costumes, then you’re probably looking at around 11 hours or longer.
Replay Value
I don’t see any major replay value in this game, aside from going back for achievements that you may have missed in your first playthrough.
Genre(s)
Your action is in the destruction of the enemies that hinder your forward progress. The adventure is in the people and creatures you meet along the way and the quests that they give you that you partake in.
Not to mention the adventure of your main mission.
The platforming isn’t intense. It starts off pretty basic and as you progress in the levels and the areas, things get a bit different and you need to pay more attention to your platforming skills, as certain platforms are timed and there are moving spikes and whatnot.
Not to mention the enemies that get in your way.
But it’s never palms-are-sweaty, mom’s-spaghetti type of stressful.
Well we’re playing as a kid who’s on a quest to stop Mr. B from kidnapping the old folk and turning them into hot dogs, so that alone makes this an RPG, but you also get abilities to choose from as you progress through the game to make things a bit more fun and interesting and maybe a little easier as you battle your way to success.
Controls
The controls are pretty smooth once you get used to them, but until then, you might have a bit of difficulty at some moments. Primarily with the wall jumping and hopping up onto a ledge.
You don’t have to point in the direction of where to jump during the wall jump section, you only need to hit the jump button. Unless you’re jumping on a single wall, then you’ll need to constantly jump off that one wall and go back to it to keep trying to go up it for whatever reason.
But another slightly janky part that might throw you off is the character will pull themselves up if you jump up close to the ledge of a cliff. So you don’t have to jump off of it to get up there.
Like I said, it takes some getting used to.
Or it did for me, at least.
The attacks and the switching of weapons and potions was simplistic and easy however. I can say that everything else was pretty smooth going. It’s just the whole jumping around ledges that takes getting used to and isn’t quite a smooth-going as everything else.
Combat
Some of the enemies, you’ll be able to bounce on their heads to kill them.
For the most part, you’ll be swinging your sword. Other times, it’s nice to throw bombs into clusters of enemies. Note that some of them have shields, and you’ll have to break their shield in order to break them.
Interactions
The only interactions you’ll be doing is opening chests, and you’ll be prompted to use a specific button to open them up when standing in front of them. Once they’re open, you only need to walk over an item to pick it up–as long as your inventory isn’t full of said item.
So there’s no need to spam a button to pick up objects. Just focus on forward progression!
Characters
Style of Speech
The characters you speak with all have a different style of speech, depending on who they are and really where you find them within the game–such as in the boating area, you might come across a pirate who’s going to have a pirate’s dialect, for example. They don’t all sound alike, which is refreshing, and each one certainly has their own personality.
Movement
Aside from combat, the only movements you’ll be able to do is:
- move left and right
- jump
- slow-fall
The movements are smooth, aside from my complaints about the controls of the wall-jumping.
Abilities
So you get a variety of abilities within the game that are more or less passive–like collecting coins at a distance–but then there are some abilities you can gain from opening chests, such as flames to go with your attacks, or poison.
You don’t acquire everything at the start. You have to work your way to getting the abilities, and every so often you’ll have a pop-up with several abilities to choose from. You can choose one until the next set of choices pop up for you to choose from.
And like I said, some special attack abilities come out of chests and such.
Graphics
Style
As you can tell from the screenshot above, the style of graphics is very cartoony and adorably goofy looking with googly eyes and trails of drool leaking out of mouths. Nothing is too serious–not even the enemies who are coming at you, even when they try to put on their serious face.
Soundtrack
Background Music
The background music is pleasant enough to listen to. I don’t really have anything to say on it. It didn’t stand out to me while I was playing it, but I know it was nice to listen to while actually playing the game. Having come back to this review page after not playing the game for a few days, I can’t say that I really remember the soundtrack for the game, however, so it didn’t really leave an impression.
Sound Effects
The sound effects are just as fun as the graphics.
And by that I mean when you hop in the whale’s mouth for it to take you on a ride across the ocean to another continent, it’ll belch you out. So yeah, props to the sound effects.
Final Thoughts
I found it hilarious that they placed in a building to pay homage for the creators of the game in a fun little way with pictures and little blurbs about them (in a comedic way) as well as this gigantic statue the character is standing in front of. And of course this is just one of the funny things the game has to offer, so if you appreciate a game with comedic value, then there’s no reason you shouldn’t at least give The Adventure Pals a try.
It’s not a difficult game by any means, despite being a platformer. And I only say that because I know several platformers that can be a bit rough to get through.
The characters are goofy, the dialogue is goofy, the gameplay isn’t terribly smooth all the time but gives you a good time.
