Endeavor

Link to game

Endeavor by zillx is going to be one of those games, by golly.  I mean, the game is a platformer, and platformers in the flash realm I tend to avoid because most of them are just broken.  Broken as in either platformer hell, or as in the platforming mechanics are awkward... look, long story short a computer keyboard does no justice to platformers for I've always felt that they faired better on consoles with a buttoned controller designed for the fluid movement of thumbs along buttons and analog sticks that a computers arrow key's just don't allow for.

So, why in hell did I take a risk with this?  Well, in the words of Yathzee "I am a unbiased critic (shut up I am) and I should give everything a chance to surprise me."  And by golly was I surprised!

The story goes that you are a mountain dwarf living in one of those colonies being managed by one of those super geeks that can figure out and play Dwarf Fortress.  One day you are tasked by a dead relative via their will (ah, that gaming trope!) to go get some mcguffin.

And get no help from your neighbours

At some point, after hopping your way out of Mt Tutorial you find yourself falling into hell... I assume.  I mean, if that is hell than I don't understand the big deal fundamentalist Christians make about hell and how not following God's law will get us there...

and Malor seems to be a happening kind of guy.

So, once I fall into the afterlife and learning that I'm in the pristine hell I am tasked by this dude named Malor to go gather up some mcguffin for he/she/it in exchange for getting me back up in the surface.

Far enough.  So, platformer controls are straight forward: arrow keys to move, X to jump and C to talk to the various dwarves and mutants that we come across throughout this adventure.

Like that... wtf... conspiring against its mates.

Now, you might be wondering what that blue bar up there is for.  Well, I'll tell you: its an endurance bar.  You need that thing climb ladders, jump, ledge grab (yes, you can do that) swim and shoot thunder!

A dwarf swimming?  rotfl!

Yeah, you can grab a ledge, leap off it, and grab another ledge.  This sounds awesome, except this wastes that blue bar, and if its depleted you fall back to the ground, which makes this darkening effect and freezes you in place if you fall from a far enough height.  While the bar bounces back when your on land, this is used to make you do certain tasks in order, for better or worse.  This means your going to have to collect fruit that ups your endurance.  Murder will also do that once you can zap everything with lighting!

Look at that bee, being all smug despite the fact it can't hurt you!

Now, this game work is a very diverse one.  You will end up in ice land, hill land, pillar land, cave land, volcano land, and jungle land.  All fun and good there!  Each place with its own, ambient music to put you in the mood for epic fun!

Ice land is icy

Hill land hilly

and volcano land is... lava-ie.  HeHe

Now, the game was evilly designed to make the player reply it at least twice.  How?

Its River Song.  That means spoiler territory!

So, there is an arching storyline here that can yield you two different endings.  If you play the game as you think you are suppose to, well, you will get all the gems and Malor will ride you back up home in a beam of light.  Keep going and, you remember that spot at the start of the game you couldn't get to?  Ok, you can totally get up there, you grab a sword, given instructions to kill Malor with it... what a fuck?  The guy that has been helping us the entire time?  That bastard!

Ok, so change of plans.  We go and kill Malor... but as you leave the ground shakes and you get Malor taunting you about how you got tricked into helping an evil deity and the game ends.

Course, when I got that ending I felt that there was something missing, so I went back and tried not to pick up the mcguffin so that Malor wouldn't become all powerful.  Well, I grab as much fruit as I can get and kill as many innocents as I can to get as much endurance as possible and I climb that big fat wall at the west-most region of the map.  I do this to find an item that gives me infinite endurance... so the slaughter becomes pointless.

Sorry

So I get to that point again, grab the sword, be instructed to kill, and Malor tried to invoke his power, and demands that you not kill it.  I totally went back down and stuck my sword into Malor.

It looks more like shoving the Master Sword back into the Pedestal of Time

And then I get a melancholy "I killed the deity, but I've killed fourteen.  I don't deserve to return above."

I can't win!

Course, at any rate, this game is platformer heaven with the focus on exploration and collecting.  While the keyboard controls are awkard as they usually are for this kind of game it isn't quite as bad.  I did get a sense of flying from this game, and that is a good sign for a platformer.  Not for those of us who want barrels of gore in our experience, but it is worth a peek otherwise.