Game

The Messenger 2018

Developed by Sabotage

  • Platform, Adventure, Indie, Arcade

As a demon army besieges his village, a young ninja ventures through a cursed world, to deliver a scroll paramount to his clan's survival. Leveraging players expectations as a core game design ingredient, The Messenger is first presented as an 8-bit action platformer with a simple story, that unravels into an epic time traveling tale, eventually revealing itself as a 16-bit Metroidvania game packed with replay value and deadpan humor. In a village of ninjas, an ancient prophecy foretells that a "Western Hero" will one day arrive to save them from the demons that plague the land. When the Demon King attacks, the promised hero appears and repels him, then entrusts a young ninja with a sacred scroll — naming him the Messenger and charging him to carry it east, to the top of a distant mountain. Aided along the way by a mysterious blue-robed shopkeeper, the Messenger sets out across a perilous world, his simple delivery gradually drawing him into a far greater struggle that spans centuries and bends time itself.

PlatformAdventureIndieArcadeActionComedyretroninja2dmetroidvaniadifficultpixel graphics8-bitPlayStation 4, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

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Character

Nostalgic, plot-driven, epic and resolved.

  • contemporarynostalgic
  • character-ledplot-driven
  • intimateepic
  • resolvedopen-ended
  • rawmeticulous

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