A touch bizarre and wildly silly, Sockventure is a game for fans of platformers and those who want to get into them. Simple, effective, and fun.
There’s nothing quite like a good old-fashioned platformer. Platformers are a huge and well-known genre employed by game companies, big and small. So, it’s not a far cry from reality to say that platforming games have quite a reputation to live up to. After all, if you can’t match up to the giants, you’ll fall hard, and platforming giants are massive.
Sockventure undertakes this most arduous hurdle. Sockventure is a 2D platformer in a familiar vein, developed by Nighthouse Games and published by Versus Evil, available on both Steam and the Nintendo Switch. As a game, Sockventure is more along the lines of classic titles like Super Meat Boy, precision-based platformers where timing and careful execution are absolutely vital to your success.
To begin with, the story of Sockventure is rather simple and whimsical, but not in a way that feels detrimental. The basics of the plot are as such: you take control of a superheroic Sock (yes, you read that right), who is called upon by a Kid in need. The dilemma? In his attempt to do his laundry, his washing machine has decided to fight back, and all of his favorite socks have been lost in their cursed depths.
So from there, the plot of Sockventure plays out very easily. As a Sock of superheroic proportions, you must delve into the array of dangerous environments located inside the cursed washing machine and find all of the poor, lost socks within. The Kid frequently chimes in with a line of dialogue or two, but the dangers within are faced by you, the Sock, alone.
And with that out of the way, how is the gameplay that Sockventure provides you? Well, it is exactly what you’d expect from any platforming game, which is meant as a compliment!
To begin with, you’re introduced to the simple controls, of course. As a 2D platformer, you can run from side to side and do either a short hop or long jump based on how long you hold the jump button down. Simple, yet well-refined and effective. Sockventure handled its controls very well. They felt tight and responsive, which is exactly how they should feel in a game within this genre.
Sockventure features seven different ‘Chapters’, all with different themed obstacles and color schemes. Each chapter has a good handful of individual levels to go through, with the ultimate goal of traversing each level to be, well, finding the socks and making it to the end of the chapter. Nothing incredibly strenuous, though the levels did feature what felt like a very solid difficulty curve. It never particularly felt like there was a rapid spike in difficulty at any point during my gameplay.
In addition to the basics, there are also a few classic abilities that you gain access to throughout the game to keep gameplay flowing and the experience feeling fresh. The abilities you get your hands on are familiar to any seasoned fan of such precision platforming games: wall jumping, double jumps, dashes, and stomps.
Again, nothing out of the ordinary, but it was rather nice to unlock these abilities as the game went on. It prevented an unnecessary block of explanation from being thrown at the player at the beginning and allowed for good pacing concerning puzzles. As stated previously, the flow of the game felt very fair, and it never really felt like a struggle to incorporate what was learned from the new mechanics into practical use.
However, such a smooth experience did have a bit of a downside. Sockventure felt unfortunately short for how it presented itself. The gameplay was incredibly fun, to the extent that once you get into the groove of things, it felt pretty natural to just… keep playing.
Unfortunately, however, that came to a halt rather quickly, as the game has about a solid six or so hours of game time (give or take thirty minutes) to hand to you if you’re a casual platforming fan. If you’re a seasoned veteran or simply just have an aptitude for such games, you could probably knock an hour off of that time.
Of course, Sockventure also has some additional content to gun for if you’re a fan of one hundred percent games. Each chapter has a certain amount of coins scattered across all of their levels, which, when completely collected, work to unlock ‘Dark Chapters’, extra special bonus Chapters featuring some more difficult content.
In addition, various regular socks are hidden around the nooks and crannies of the various levels, which can be found and collected. These don’t do anything for you as the player but are a nice goal to shoot for when aiming for full completion. The bonus socks can be worn cosmetically, which is a nice touch that adds a bit of fun flavor to the game and lets you shake up your footwear-based aesthetic, should you so please.
But really, Sockventure’s length is the main thing that it has against it if you even want to consider it such. If you’re looking for nitpicks, the game doesn’t particularly do anything new. There aren’t any mechanics that could be considered ‘original’ for the game itself. Everything, mechanically, that Sockventure presents can be seen in some way, shape, or form in another notable entry in the genre. All precision platformers have jumps, dashes, and wall bounces.
But to be honest, sometimes a game doesn’t need to do something wildly new to be something worth playing. Sockventure is a fun iteration of a fun gaming genre, and while it may not be a stellar advancement in style, it certainly did its homework on how to make a platforming game fun. It has style, silly art, and tight, responsive controls. And that makes it fun, which is what games are about.
So, sit down, kick your imagination into gear, plop yourself down next to the washing machine while you wait for your laundry to be done, and play some Sockventure. It’s certainly worth the few hours.
And that’s going to be the end of our Sockventure review for the Nintendo Switch! If this game piqued your interest, you can check out its website, and you can grab it on Steam and the Nintendo Switch.
