Super Amazing Wagon Adventure

I really like this game, like a lot (look at the top editor). I found it just the other day after I had a dollar left over after buying another magnificent XBLIG game, Wizorb. It was the first time I'd ever heard of this when I stumbled upon it. Just the name was enough to draw me to it. Super Amazing Wagon Adventure. It's just such a mouthful that perfectly fits the game. It's simply just an amazing adventure.

Basically, Super Amazing Wagon Adventure (or SAWA as I will continue to call it) is a crazy, action-filled comedic riff on a classic game that we've all played, The Oregon Trail. So much so, that the game even looks like the original The Oregon Trail having an Apple II graphic style and featuring music similar to what you'd find in an Apple II game. Once you begin your adventure, you create the 3 characters that you will take on this adventure by naming them and picking their appearance. After you've done this, you choose your wagon. On your first playthrough, you will have just the standard wagon, but you can unlock somewhere around 10 more wagons just by playing the game.

So once you've picked your characters and wagon, you are ready to start your journey. The game is split into two different genres. For most of the game you will be in your wagon and there it plays like a 2d shooter. When you're not in your wagon and on foot, though, the game plays like a dual-joystick shooter. But don't worry, because the game plays great in both styles. The weaponry in SAWA is pretty amazing too. You start out with just a simple pea-shooter pistol with unlimited ammo, but you can pick up randomly dropped weapons with limited ammo. These weapons include the simple enough shotguns and snipers, but you can also find ninja stars, ray-guns and magic wands. The enemies vary pretty greatly as well. Some enemies don't even attack you like the squirrels or deer. Most enemies do, though, like the many bandits, sharks, and wolves. Oh, and I shan't forget the giant octopus or space satellite I had multiple heated battles with.

The game is supremely funny too. In between each new screen in the game, you are presented with a black screen with text upon it. These screens could be telling you that a character has come down with the flu which almost instantly drops the characters health down to a single heart (each character starts with 4 hearts but health kits can be picked up to replenish hearts). Most of these screens, though, will tell you the situation in which the characters are in. Like in one screen where you come upon a river. The game gives you the choice to ford the river, or jump it (which one of your characters suggests). If you choose to ford the river, a black screen comes up and tells you that "They made the (probably wise) decision to ford the river". Alternatively, you can jump over the river in which you may end up in orbit above Earth.

The game has a ton of replayability too. I've heard that it takes only about 20 minutes to finish a playthrough of SAWA, but I wouldn't know because even after about 30-40 tries, I haven't been able to finish it. This is because of how tough this game gets at a few parts and I just never have enough health when I get to these parts. That doesn't mean that I will stop trying to finish it though, because I love this game that much. The replayability doesn't end there though, not by a long shot. A very big draw of the game is that every time you play, the journey is different. You see, the game randomly selects what will happen next. Sure, you will go through basically the same path, but different events will occur every time. Maybe you'll be lucky and find a cave with weapons and health in it or it could have giant man-eating spiders. Or you may not stumble upon the cave at all and instead find mushrooms which your character will end up eating, sending him/her on a trip to "defeat [your character's] inner demons". Or in another situation, one of your characters will fall in love with another, which will lead to sex which replenishes those 2 characters hearts completely (don't worry if you have 3 male characters, either, there is gay relations in this, too).

Even still, like I said above, the game has the 10 or so unlockable wagons (I have 3 or 4 unlocked over my 30-40 attempts to finish this). And yet there is still more content. The game includes 4 unlockable survival modes which you also unlock by playing the game and encountering random events. AND EVEN STILL, there is a Shuffle game mode which is unlocked upon completing the game in which you're put through all of the screens in the game randomly.

So, if I haven't persuaded you into buying this game yet, then it isn't for you. And even if it isn't for you, I'd hope that you buy it (ITS JUST A DAMN DOLLAR!) just to support the one-man developer, Sparsevector.

5/5

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