AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected is a short and easy to complete rogue-lite game. It is fun but has some flaws as well. It takes around 5h for completion and has no missable achievements.



Approximate amount of time to 100%: 4-5h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 4/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes, This guide from Knoef is wonderful, but you don’t really need a guide.
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty option
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
I enjoyed this rogue-lite game a lot and it was easy to get to 100% but there are things that could have been better.
At the start, AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected felt quite hard. I had heard that others have beaten the game before they got the achievement for 15 runs and my first 5 runs went horrible and I didn’t even come close to the first boss fight. So I expected that I’m just horrible at this game and would need a bit more time. After a while, I got used to how the hitboxes in this game worked and found some very helpful friends which give you in-game abilities. And I was able to beat the game in around 10-11 runs, so the achievement for 15 runs was also my last one.
The goal of this game is to find friends and beating areas to be able to find more friends. This part sounded fun but was tedious. To recruit a friend the first time, you have to choose the right options in a conversation, and you can only have the conversation with them once each run. So you should learn from your mistakes and choose other options the next time. After a while, this was just annoying, and I’m very glad that once you’ve recruited them the first time, a new run you only have to talk to them if you want to take them along your new run.
My biggest pet peeve is how big the maps are without many interesting things in them. Going to a friendship cube (Which you need to be able to recruit a friend) and walking back to a friend takes ages while there is not much to do on the map. I think that maybe 20 to 30% of my game time was walking on the map from A to B. It felt like a way to make the gameplay longer but with that a lot more boring. If the maps were smaller and just easy to pick things up and get to the NPCs (friends) to talk to them it would feel a lot better.
I do recommend AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected because it is fun and an easy 100%, but I wish it was a lot more fun. It had a lot of potentials.
Developer:
Aurelien Regard Games
This review for AWAY: Journey to the Unexpected was written on 18 March 2021, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 16 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.