The Messenger (2018)
Nintendo Switch · PC (Microsoft Windows) · PlayStation 4 · PlayStation 5 · Xbox One
3.89 from 693 ratings
2683 members have it in their collection · 81 playing now · 1248 backlogged · 267 wish listed
How long? Main story 14h · with extras 13h · 100% 18h (from 57 logged playthroughs)
Details
- Developers
- Sabotage
- Publishers
- Devolver Digital
- Genres
- Adventure, Arcade, Indie, Platform
- Themes
- Action, Comedy
- Steam
- View on Steam
Release dates
- Aug 30, 2018 (Worldwide) Nintendo Switch, PC (Microsoft Windows)
- Mar 19, 2019 (Worldwide) PlayStation 4
- Jun 25, 2020 (Worldwide) Xbox One
- Jan 23, 2025 (Full Release) (Worldwide) PlayStation 5
Related
Bundled in
- The Messenger: Picnic Panic Bundle (Jul 2019) · NSW
Expansions
- The Messenger: Picnic Panic (Jul 2019) · NSW, PC, PS4, XONE
Featured in lists
Rating distribution
5 stars
197
4 stars
278
3 stars
167
2 stars
44
1 star
7
Community All Reviews Statuses
Status Chawls Oct 22, 2023
Pretty much everything in this has been solid so far except for the dialogue. How many times do characters need to make a joke where the punchline is "this is a video game." I'm not finding this clever, funny or original, and honestly would have preferred generic non-fourth wall-breaking lines instead. This word building could have potential to be interesting …
Read morePretty much everything in this has been solid so far except for the dialogue. How many times do characters need to make a joke where the punchline is "this is a video game." I'm not finding this clever, funny or original, and honestly would have preferred generic non-fourth wall-breaking lines instead. This word building could have potential to be interesting if not for the constant intentional breaking of immersion for another aggressive attempt to be funny.
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Status Goodknight65 Jan 10, 2023
first half of the game is amazing , second half sucked as it forces you to backtrack to old areas constantly with little guidance and very few fast traveling locations
Status TheBeautifulEric May 14, 2022 Completed
+I really liked the story and how it slowly became unraveled
+Mobility feels awesome. Cloudstepping, gliding, and rope darting are dope and the Messenger feels good to control.
+Upgrades are optional so the player can adjust the difficulty to how they like it
-Not a big fan of the meta/4th wall breaking dialogue
-Lack of enemy variety
+I really liked the story and how it slowly became unraveled
+Mobility feels awesome. Cloudstepping, gliding, and rope darting are dope and the Messenger feels good to control.
+Upgrades are optional so the player can adjust the difficulty to how they like it
-Not a big fan of the meta/4th wall breaking dialogue
-Lack of enemy variety
There are aspects of the game that I find annoying, but I think that the pros outweigh the cons. It feels well-made, polished, and it comes across as a labor of love to me. I will be playing the DLC as well.
Status TheBeautifulEric May 9, 2022 Completed
This game somehow feels inspired by Ninja Gaiden, while simultaneously feeling nothing like it at all. The enemies are lacking in variety so far, which is pretty disappointing. The same enemies I fought in the first stage basically reappear in every stage afterwards. I do enjoy the fact that it’s accessible because the punishment for failing isn’t too harsh. Not …
Read moreThis game somehow feels inspired by Ninja Gaiden, while simultaneously feeling nothing like it at all. The enemies are lacking in variety so far, which is pretty disappointing. The same enemies I fought in the first stage basically reappear in every stage afterwards. I do enjoy the fact that it’s accessible because the punishment for failing isn’t too harsh. Not a big fan of the writing, it’s purposefully written so that everything is silly. I think I hit a part in the game where everything is going to pick up, I’m interested in seeing how I’ll feel about the game by the end.
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Status BMO Feb 25, 2021
I decided to play The Messenger about a week ago because people really seems to be hot and cold when it comes to this game. One might even call it divisive.
Let's get this out of the way first: this is a fun game. Sometimes it's a bit too easy, and some additional challenge might be nice, but I …
I decided to play The Messenger about a week ago because people really seems to be hot and cold when it comes to this game. One might even call it divisive.
Let's get this out of the way first: this is a fun game. Sometimes it's a bit too easy, and some additional challenge might be nice, but I am having a good time.
Let's also get this out of the way: it's not really doing anything new (oh what a thing to say). Which is more than fine. It's a perfectly enjoyable self reflexive homage to 8- and 16-bit games like Ninja Gaiden mixed with Metroidvania elements. It also borrows heavily from Shovel Knight, duplicating many of the best elements of Shovel Knight and the other Knight instalments. It also shares commonalities with Celeste, although the concurrent nature of their development leads me to assume Celeste wasn't a big inspiration, unless Sabotage really enjoyed the Pico-8 version of Celeste. But let's not attribute anything to Celeste and say that both Maddy Thorson and the devs at Sabotage share similar influences.
Overall I am enjoying the game. I am a ways past the mid-game switch, and still enjoying myself. The first half reminds me very much of Shovel Knight. The second half reminds me of aspects of the Plague Knight instalment of Shovel Knight (especially the home base of operations). But overall, mechanically, the first and second half are not the idea of night and day that I was led to believe represented the differences inherent to the two halves. Which leads me to a couple questions.
People who love the first half but hate the second half, what put you off about the mid-game switch?
People who enjoy the second half more than the first half, what do you find compelling about the mid-game switch?
Status AlfredoSalza Feb 11, 2021
Dropped when they gave me the map. I wanted to play a challenging gaiden-like and instead I got a boringly easy mess of a game that suddenly thinks it can become a metroidvania. No thanks.
Status kamoh Aug 18, 2020
There's some decent humor, but the gameplay tilts either from wildly uninteresting and unchallenging, to irritating boss battles that suddenly demand perfection and pixel-perfect dodging, which is tricky when the controls aren't that responsive. Big 'ol meh.