Nelson Schneider's Game Review of Evoland

Rating of
4/5

Evoland

A Brief History of Our Times.
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 01/10/14

“Evoland” was originally created by French Indie developer, Shiro Games, in less than 48 hours as part of the 2012 Ludum Dare competition, which it won. After refining this rough project and adding a few coats of polish, Shiro Games put it up for sale via digital distribution while leaving the original Ludum Dare version, now known as “Evoland Classic” up for free in-browser play. With the Ludum Dare 2012 theme only requiring that competing games somehow relate to evolution, “Evoland” ran with a rather meta, introspective take on the concept by looking at the evolution of videogames themselves. Specifically, “Evoland” provides us with a lighthearted look at the long trail of action/adventure games and RPGs, all rolled into one (which is fitting, considering the extent to which the line between those two genres have been blurred recently).

Presentation
It’s hard to nail down “Evoland’s” presentation because everything in it changes so much over the course of the game. While it starts in monochrome green-scale with 8-bit sprites and no sound, it quickly adopts a larger and larger color pallet and more and more modern features. It only takes a few hours to go from a completely primitive looking game to full polygons with high-resolution textures. “Evoland” even riffs on some of the missteps in the course of game evolution by forcing the player to suffer through periods of low-resolution textures, blurry pre-rendered backdrops, and loading screens (of course, all of these low points in the evolution of games’ presentation are mercifully shorter than the years we had to put up with them in the real world).

The only real complaints I have about “Evoland’s” presentation is that, as a history lesson, it puts a few developments in the wrong order (like waiting until post-polygonal graphics to upgrade the music to something better than chiptunes). It also conspicuously leaves out the period of hideously-jaggy polygons being crammed into every available space during the dawn of the 5th Generation. Granted, I don’t have any fond memories of that dark time, but it was inarguably an important (mis)step in the history of this type of game. Instead, “Evoland’s” polygons are immediately about 1000% more awesome than any early game could hope to produce, which can both implant false memories in oldsters and give youngsters a false impression of the past. Even worse, it filled me with powerful feelings of despair over what COULD have been if those early 3D games (*glares at “Ocarina”*) attempted to stay truer to their predecessors.

One thing that “Evoland” has in plenty that its ancestors didn’t, however, is bugs. For some reason the game timer integration with Steam doesn’t work with “Evoland,” leaving me to believe I only played the game for 7 minutes, when it had to be at least 7 hours (probably closer to 10). Even worse, “Evoland” refused to recognize my Xbox 360 controller until I unplugged my Razer Hydra and set Windows to run both “Evoland” and its controller helper app to run as administrator. Worst of all, however, is the fact that “Evoland” only has one save slot, making this stroll down Memory Lane a one-way trip. While most of these technical issues aren’t really game-breaking or difficult to fix, they are the types of thing one would ONLY find in PC games from “Evoland’s” pretend time period, while “Evoland” itself draws almost all of its inspiration from console games.

Story
“Evoland’s” story, being a time capsule of the whole of action/adventure games and RPGs from the 1980s to the 2000s is by necessity generic, uninspired, and not very good. That said, it does touch upon most of the overused plot elements from these genres and hangs a lampshade on almost every trope in the book. However, it clearly takes far too much inspiration from “Final Fantasy 7,” with a disproportionate amount of pseudo name dropping.

Regardless of the generic nature of the narrative, it does at least hold itself together and is internally consistent. There is a minimum of character development for the two playable characters and for a handful of NPCs, a backstory for the game world, and a villain with a goal and motivation. Thus the story in “Evoland” isn’t really missing anything… aside from depth, subplots, originality, and a good localization. Yes, “Evoland” even suffers from a bit of Engrish at times. With a name like Shiro Games, I thought for sure the developer would be based in Japan or at least somewhere in Asia, but was taken completely by surprise when nothing but French names appeared in the credits. I’m not sure if the stiff writing and sometimes iffy grammar were included in “Evoland” with the purpose of pointing out that older games frequently didn’t have bestselling authors or even literate proofreaders to work on them, or if the Shiro Games folks just aren’t great at translation.

Gameplay
When I was a youngster in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I often fantasized about how awesome it would be if a videogame existed that combined the best parts of “The Legend of Zelda,” “Final Fantasy,” and “Dragon Quest” (not necessarily the original games in those franchises, but the 16-bit entries). I called my brilliant idea “The Legend of Dragon Fantasy,” and imagined it to include a mash-up (before mash-ups were even a thing) of action/adventure dungeons filled with puzzles and ‘Zelda’ style combat and an RPG overworld filled with ‘Final Fantasy’ style Active-Timer Battle random encounters, towns and airships. While it comes 20 years too late (and was partially beaten to the punch by the likes of “Lufia 2” and “Wild ARMs”), “Evoland” is exactly what I imagined such a mash-up to be… but simplified.

Specifically, everything from both the ‘Zelda’ side and ‘Final Fantasy’ side are well executed, but tragically limited to a tiny handful of upgrades. On the ‘Zelda’ side, there’s ONE heart container to find and TWO tools (bombs and a bow, of course). On the ‘Final Fantasy’ side, there are TWO sword upgrades and TWO armor upgrades. In the brief moment when “Evoland” channels the Western contributions to these genres and spoofs “Diablo,” the huge number of character loot slots have exactly one piece of (laughably useless) loot available for each of them. Taking the simplification further, almost all character stats are hidden in RPG mode and characters have infinite MP for casting spells (of course, healing is the only spell that gets much use anyway, which is itself probably a commentary on the poorly-balanced magic systems that were bolted onto even good games back in the day).

On the other hand, “Evoland” isn’t entirely shallow, as these simplified systems exist alongside a bunch of hidden collectables that encourage the player to thoroughly explore (and backtrack through) the entirety of the game’s (limited) environments in search of stars (for achievements) and cards (for a tic-tac-toe style mini-game). In addition, while most of the game’s dungeons are simplified, there are a couple that make use of an “Ocarina of Time” inspired time-travelling gimmick that manage to be both thought-provoking and engaging, while brilliantly changing graphical style between the ‘past’ and the ‘future.’

Overall
“Evoland” is a not-quite-100% accurate take on the history of action/adventure games and RPGs on consoles from the 1980s through the 2000s. Presenting the timeline of gameplay mechanics and technical advances in playable form, however, is a stroke of brilliance, despite a few inaccuracies and an abundance of simplification. Even taken at face value, “Evoland” is an enjoyable little game. But when taken as an educational, interactive experience, it becomes something that kids and mainstream neo-gamers should be encouraged to play, so as to at least better understand the mindset of those of us who chafe at gaming’s current domination by competitive dudebro shooters, fake RPGs, and overly-cinematic action/adventure games. “Evoland” is a caricaturized snapshop of two of gaming’s biggest genres in their prime.

Presentation: 4/5
Story: 3/5
Gameplay: 4/5
Overall (not an average): 4/5

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