Let’s Revolution definitely has some of that going on. This is a roguelike puzzle gamewhere you earn new abilities that are randomly made available through gameplay. But the game it’s based on is probably one you don’t expect. The gameplay here is inspired by the old Windows pack-in game Minesweeper! On top of that, the cartoonish artwork channels vibes of Moebius mixed with Adventure Time. If you’re confused by any of that, our sincere apologies. Please look up Moebius (he was an utterly brilliant comic artist that worked on and visualized an absolute ton of popular culture).
You get the idea though. You’re fighting your way through an unrevealed field of squares reminiscent of Minesweeper. The first original game designed and published by BUCK, Let’s Revolution is a uniquely casual strategy game that slowly ramps up difficulty as you struggle to rebel against a tyrannical king over the course of ten levels and multiple areas of the land of Beebom. While it initially comes across as a light tongue-in-cheek game that might be silly, there’s a lot of depth here and players are going to be surprised by this unique and unexpected title.
There are six playable characters in Let’s Revolution, but you start out with a single one available, the Trooper. Your trooper has a couple of simple abilities to start. You can spin around with a Roundhouse and reveal the 8 tiles around you which uses energy or hop from one to the next. You can also use a bow to shoot an enemy a couple of squares away which doesn’t use energy but you only have 5 shots. There’s a constant balancing act here. Blue abilities are ones that require energy but you only have a finite supply and depending on the character, it can only be replenished in certain ways. Green items are single use items that either go empty (like the bow) or are used up, like the Full Energy potion the Trooper starts with. There are tons of blue abilities and green items available and they come up randomly during gameplay.
Here’s the thing. Your attacks take a fair amount of energy. You’ll also have to find the enemies by moving from tile to tile and uncovering them or attacking uncovered tiles, burning your energy in the process. The Trooper for example has to refill energy by uncovering a certain number of tiles. If you’ve already uncovered them all, you’ll be starting the next stage unable to fight. On top of that, you need to find training stations and defeat enemies, otherwise you won’t be able to afford to upgrade or replenish anything and your revolution is doomed to failure.
There are ten stages in a run in Let’s Revolution. You will visit three possible worlds in each, 4 levels in the first world and three in the second and third. As you progress through the game, you slowly unlock more and more powerful potential abilities and items but it also makes it harder for you to decide what to take. Training centers have two potential abilities or items and you can reset them if you don’t like them for a gold coin. But choose one and the other disappears and sometimes taking the wrong item can be the difference between success and failure.
It’s not as simple as just guessing which tiles to flip over either. Your characters have specific ranges of movement and attack like a tactical strategy game. When you move into a space, the spaces around you and the one you’re on show numbers. These are the number of roads touching that tile in all directions (including diagonally). Just like Minesweeper, you use these to make an educated guess how many potential enemies might be around you. There’s a list of enemies on the right hand side of the screen and the game tells you when you’ve killed them all, so you know roughly what you’re getting into. Enemies are only on roads, never on surrounding tiles, but all the gold, items, and shops are only on roads too. The entirety of Let’s Revolution is a risk/benefit analysis where the wrong choice means taking a hit or even death. When you only start with four health (on normal) and running into an enemy burns one, you really don’t have any option but to be careful!
If it seems like a lot to take it, that’s because it kind of is. While the actual gameplay is fairly simplistic, the strategy behind success in Let’s Revolution is complex. And we’ve only talked about the Trooper so far! There are five other playable characters you’ll unlock including The Shadow, The Oracle, The Charger and more. Each playable character has two different versions with two different sets of abilities and to unlock them takes multiple runs where you gather upgrade crystals. Don’t worry, if you die they get turned in either way, so even if you’re not great at the game at first, you’ll make some progress! Each playable character’s abilities are radically different from all the others as well. Some jump multiple spaces or must reveal all non-road tiles for bonuses. Others only recharge their energy when all enemies are defeated or hidden. Every playable character requires a different approach to gameplay and if you just try to bulldoze your way through, you’ll fail.
Don’t worry though. There aren’t just six sets of levels. In additional to procedurally generated levels, there are seven difficulty levels for each character. You can choose to start the game on easy or normal, but beating a run on normal unlocks New Game +. There five levels to new game plus as well, adding difficulty each time until you’ll be struggling to survive and swearing at the game. That makes for a total of 42 successful runs to complete the game in theory, but you still might not have unlocked every item and ability by then and that assumes you make it through the first time every time (spoiler: you won’t). There’s a lot of replay value in Let’s Revolution and honestly, just replaying through levels you’ve already beating is fun due to the procedural generation and randomization of items and abilities.
While you’re spending all that time learning the ins and outs of the game, you also get to enjoy some spectacular visuals. While cartoon-styled, Let’s Revolution has some really creative backgrounds and visuals. The opening cinema is pretty cool too. Even though there isn’t much plot, you’ll still enjoy the world building in terms of design. It almost feels like a game that was visually crafted in the 1970s only with a modern veneer on top. That earlier reference to Moebius’ artwork wasn’t inaccurate either. This is some top rate visual design. The menu systems are equally outstanding and while this is a minimalist game, the entire GUI is simple and easy to use, providing a slick, responsive interface that sucks you right into the action. Characters and enemies are creative and ridiculous and the King is a loathsome jerk of a monarch that you absolutely love to hate. Everything about the design work in the game shows that the team put a lot of heart into this release.
Sound is equally interesting in Let’s Revolution. Antfood Labs did the soundtrack for the game and it’s a bubbly, unique sounding selection of tracks that both calms you and carries the game effectively. Minimalist music combines with interesting sound effects to fill the background of the game. If you’re curious, you can check out (or buy) the album here on Bandcamp and if that’s your kind of tunes, you’ll definitely want to pick this one up. The stylized voicework is also cool and while it takes a bit to figure out what some characters are mumbling, that’s part of the charm of the audio design here.
It’s hard to explain what’s so compelling about Let’s Revolution. Maybe it’s the complexity of learning multiple play strategies. Maybe it’s the gorgeous visuals and sound that manage to pull you into the world of Beebom. Or perhaps it’s the modernization of a classic Windows game turned into something new and unique. There’s nothing else like Let’s Revolution out there and that’s a surprise, considering how many gamers spent hour after hour playing the stock Windows 3.11 game catalog. As relaxing puzzle games go, they honestly don’t get much better than this. Let’s Revolution is an absolute joy to play and will keep you coming back run after run to test yourself against the king and his minions. At $19.99, it’s quite a reasonably-priced game as well and there’s absolutely no reason that any gamer who is a puzzle enthusiast won’t want to pick this one up. The time is right for it, so Let’s Revolution!
This review is based on a digital copy of Let’s Revolution provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played qually well in both. Let’s Revolution is also available for PS4/PS5, Xbox, and PC.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.