The Adventure Pals

*Note that this review will focus on the single-player aspect of the game.
My Playtime: 9.2h (100% achievement, finished the game)
My First Playthrough: 8.1h
Grindy Achievement(s): No.
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (20 achievements, 1 missable).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.
Intro
The Adventure Pals is a sidescroller platformer game where you have to navigate through the level to reach the exit, possibly killing enemies and picking up collectibles that you can find. It's pretty much made for casual players by giving optional items and checkpoints to make it easier to finish and 100% the game.
Pros:
- 21 levels with 5 boss fights
- Unique boss fights
- A lot of collectibles in the area
- Checkpoint system to save you whenever you die
Cons:
- Gameplay can get a bit repetitive
- Uninteresting dialogues
Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Should you buy this game?
Yes.
If you enjoy easy platformer games, buy this one at a sale.
In-Depth Review
Visuals
I instantly recognized the art style of Jimp, the artist who drew the Kongpanions on the Kongregate website. The characters look cute with their big eyes and simplistic, cartoonish features which blend well with its background that has a softer outline. I enjoyed the simplicity and the cute look of the UI as well, which are done in the same style as the game itself.
Story
Despite the numerous dialogues in the game, I didn't find any of them to be interesting. It's definitely child-friendly with its unique, nonsensical quests, and you can always tell that they are fiction. Moreover, the cheerful song and the cute-looking image help to enhance the cartoony vibes. However, the cutscenes that showed the characters up close look a bit odd with their lack of animation frames and sound, although it is still good enough at that state.
The Game
Gameplay
The Adventure Pals is a platformer at its core. You'll have to explore 5 areas in a level, each with a checkpoint that you can respawn to whenever you die. However, resurrecting from the checkpoint will make you lose your progress in the whole area, forcing you to explore the whole area again. That being said, it's almost impossible to die unless you don't stock up on healing pots beforehand, and you can always buy it with your money from the world map.
Collectibles are abundant. Most of them are not hard to spot; you'll most likely find them just by exploring the whole area thoroughly. I also liked how the game makes it easy to keep track of whether you already obtained the collectible in the area.
Combat
The game has 5 biomes, each with different enemies and settings. I like how they are made distinct from each other, and how the residents are differentiated based on the environment that they are living in. The characters range from animals to sentient foods, and although some enemies look similar, they have different stats, and some will even have different attack patterns. You'll have to learn how to deal with them to navigate the level with ease.
The difficulty will be ramped up as you play, albeit slightly. Enemies will be more condensed in one spot, making it hard for you to dodge. The main character's dodge can be a bit weird when dealing with 1 vs many situations, as you only need to press the direction opposite from where you are facing to move slightly to the back. However, it can be hard to see whenever an enemy is attacking whenever you are facing a lot of enemies at once, and they all can attack at once or in turns. It can be hard to dodge this way, forcing you to rush whichever weakest enemy you can find to reduce their numbers.
That being said, there are also items that you can use. The Adventure Pals mitigate their combat issue with items, whether with damage-dealing ones like bombs or healing pots to recover your health. They all can be purchased from the shops on the world map, found from a chest that you can pay your money with to open, or found from enemies' drops as a result of a power-up. To be honest, I hardly ever have to use these items apart from healing pots, and you can find them with ease once you unlock the power-ups that allow you to get them.
Boss fights don't require instant reflexes to beat - you just need to use your wits to figure out when they are vulnerable and how to dodge their attacks. Some bosses in the last few areas might give you issues, but they are nothing that you can't handle, especially since you can use your items to give yourself an upper hand.
Length and Difficulty
I finished the game in 8.1h. I missed one achievement in that playthrough, so I created a new save to get that last achievement. It took me 1.1h to get that last achievement and I had to skip most of the levels that way. The game is easy to pick up, although it might take a bit of retries for children to finish the game due to its difficulty. That being said, adults will definitely be able to finish it with ease.
Each level can be finished in ~10 minutes if you skip everything, although it's better if you explore everything that the level has to offer before moving. I liked how you can cap everything without additional grinding - just exploring and finishing every content is enough to do that.
Conclusion
The Adventure Pals is a nice, cute platformer game that you can pick up and finish in short sessions. It offers a lot of content in terms of levels and collectibles, and the game makes it easy for you to 100% it. That being said, it can be a bit repetitive towards the end, especially if you are the one that enjoys some challenge. It's definitely a game aimed at casual players, one which I would recommend at a sale.

Used to play super adventure pals when I was 10.
The nostalgia is real

Snappy controls, nice graphics, good sense of humor and surprisingly funny writing!
This one was one of the unexpected gems in my backlog. Would totally recommend for fans of platformers similar to Rayman.
Worth it even at full price. This game is among the top 3 platformers I have ever played.

Adventure pals is an action side scrolling adventure game with RPG elements leading to a unexpected surprise. The RPG elements being that you level up you character while having a wacky and interesting story to be told. As you level up, you can customise you upgrades. When you traverse each world with a Giraffe and a Rock, you meet some interesting characters that mostly guide you to the next level to collect a story's main item. An example is a farmer wants you to find his wife in a level. When you meet his wife, you will know the wacky nature of the story. The story doesn't end there. You also have a huge overarching story of saving your dad becoming a hotdog. The game is simple having a low to moderate difficulty and contains collectables. Depending on the collectable it can give you new costumes or stickers to add to your book. Each level took on average between 15-20mins (levels get larger as you progress). After a while, I saw each level as an episode from a kids cartoon. From there, I can see the genius of what they were going for; story, adventure, collect, resolution with a nemeses cursing you. You can even see each world as a season to the show. The game has 5 worlds and each world will introduce a new mechanics keeping it fresh and enriched. Enemies are diverse and just as silly as the rest of the game. The lore and the graphics are well suited to the game. Some minor issues I encountered are: - Some performance issues, such as the last area had some stutters, nothing major but was jarring - The level design branches off to different directions and choosing the wrong path to get a collectable, can result in back tracking which is annoying. - The final collectables were annoying to find and unsure what I was missing. - The game feels unfinished as some of the artwork in the conclusion of the game seems rough Being a quarter of the price of a Mario game, it took me about 11 hours to finish, which includes exploring and mucking around which is encouraged. I 100%'ed the game and recommend for kids 5-11 for sure

started playing 4-ish years ago after DanTDM played it, started back up again recently and still just as fun as before.
10/10 must play

It is a cute, family-friendly platformer with nothing new that we haven't seen before.
The only thing that I didn't like was the dead. When you die, you have to start the level from the beginning and you have to collect everything again. This kills the exploration a little bit for me.

‎This game is amazingly fun to play, its silly jokes, crafty mechanics and a unique and funny story make it quite a pleasant gaming experience. If you are looking for a challenge however, this isn't it - the game is easy, way too easy.
Definitely recommended though!