The Messenger’s intricate platforming and charming world make for a surprising journey that must be played.

Twist after twist, The Messenger turns out to be an amazing game. Everything looks and feels perfect, from its sense of humor to its level-design. It’s a must-have for every retro games lover.

Competent action-platform, curious "double-face" metroidvania, of ancient origins but with exceptional and unpredictable flickers of contemporaneity.

An amazing tribute to retro gaming like Ninja Gaiden saga. The Messenger is a great, funny and surprising action platform game with a beautiful art style and clever level design.

The Messenger is a brilliant action platformer (...or is it a metroidvania?), full of irony and pretty difficult jumps. The time shift between the 8-bit past and the 16-bit "future" is what makes the game shine - even with its low replayability.

Devolver Digital and Sabotage Studio propose a game that could innovate its genre.

It’s a tribute to the original Ninja Gaiden released in 1988, so the game obviously borrows a lot from genre’s progenitors, but it also adds a lot to the mix and its platforming mechanics are superb. Even though it gets less exciting in the second half, I have to recommend it. [11/2018, p.73]

Even if it tends to be a bit frustrating in its second half, as it opens up a bit, The Messenger is still a magnificent and really great to play independent action platformer with some clever ideas and a lovable personality.

The Messenger takes the best parts of the action-platformers it takes influence from and reinterprets them well. With clever writing, well-designed levels, and balanced difficulty curve, the game continuously hooks you with enticing skill-based challenges and satisfying payoffs. Your character might have an immediate imperative to delivering a world-saving scroll, but the journey there definitely one to savor.

The Messenger is a game that makes no effort to hide who its intended audience is, and its clever combining of two distinct gameplay genres ensures that it casts a rather wide net. Whether you’re a die-hard retro gaming fan or a genre newbie eager to dive into the deep end, Sabotage’s debut title is one adventure worth embarking on.

Less a Gaiden successor and more a general love-letter to its look and style, The Messenger allows fans to hop gleefully between cheery gaming memories without being bound by the rigid controls and punishing precision of a prior era, while somehow managing to remain entirely accessible to newcomers as a fun, unmistakeably wholehearted 2D platformer.

Creating both an 8-bit and 16-bit aesthetic is a genius idea and a very meta way for depicting the world in the past and future eras. It’s also commendable that Sabotage introduced a clever alternative to the usual double jump function we usually see in the platform genre. Though it’s filled with charm and highly competent gameplay it’s marred by exhausting backtracking (even for the genre), few enemy types and a lack of challenge.