Endeavor

Endeavor is a platformer in which you play a dwarf on a quest to obtain a secret treasure which each of his ancestors have tried to get, and failed. Naturally, things don't go as planned and you end up in purgatory just in time to be caught between a fight between a god and a demon, or so it seems. The game has three story routes, and the endgame of the story surprised me quite a bit.

As far as graphics go, the games sprites and layouts mostly do the job, with one notable exception, albeit a major one. The main character is composed of about 15 pixels, and doesn't appear to be anything resembling a dwarf. I never would've guessed I was a dwarf without being told multiple times. The rest of the pixel work is quite nice though, it all fits and whatnot.

The actual game play consists of a lot of jumping, falling, rinsing and repeating. The is also a water section somewhere in there, but other than that, its just a lot of bouncing. If you are the type who loves hidden collectibles, there are tons of stamina improving berries scattered across the landscape.

I found that the story was far and away the main reason I kept playing the game. Collecting all the energy orbs for the god, building my stamina, finally getting to find out the secret of the treasure that my family searched for, it was all very well done and vaguely lovcraftian nearing the end. The morality system involving the demon ruler was nice too, and killing the innocents actually offered a great reward in stamina, if you so chose to do so.

I can't really say much more about the game without giving away the plot, but its definitely worth playing if you want a minimalistic story based game.