RPG's have come a long way in the past few decades. We started out with tile-based low resolution pixel art leaving us to our imagination, all the way up to realistic 3D worlds that we can explore today. Evoland is an indie RPG that pays homage to the history of RPG's from the looks, play styles, and even stereotypes, but does that make it an overall fun experience?

The Concept

Evoland, published by Shiro Games, is an expanded version of the browser game that won the Ludum Dare 24 competition, which challenges designers and developers to create a game in 48 hours based around a single theme, with the theme that weekend being Evolution. The full version expands on the storyline and elements from the browser version to bring a slightly longer experience.

Evoland is a "journey through the history of action/adventure gaming" in every sense of the word. Each gameplay mechanic and visual/aural aesthetic (including walking left and up) are introduced via treasure chests, much akin to games like DLC Quest. Along the way you'll unlock larger color palettes, more movement options, sound effects and music, and enemies. These "unlocks" are all piled into the first part of the game, however, so once you get up to the 3D gaming of today about a third of the way in, you'll be just fighting with what you have except for some drips of new content here and there.

References are made to other games either in passing or more in your face. The style of game shifts from The Legend of Zelda to Final Fantasy VI (and then VII) to even a little bit of Diablo at the drop of a hat. There are references to game designers (Sakaguchi, Miyamoto) and there's even a Minecraft reference sprinkled into one of the dungeons. You'll definitely be smiling when finding these treasures, which are, sadly, all too sparse in a game that's supposed to be all about references to what came before.

The Story

The story is extremely generic on purpose. There are monsters in a cave up north, where you find a girl, who says that there is a giant evil destroying her village that you must find crystals to defeat. Her name is Kaeris. Your name is Clink. The giant evil's name is Zephyros. YOU SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING.

There are several references to the generic story, and even one time where it pokes fun at the lack of branching paths in the narrative. This underscores the fact that this is more about reliving the history of the medium, and not really about any kind of deep emotional experience. It's never taken too seriously - Evoland knows what it is.

The Graphics and Sound

The most nostalgic part of Evoland is how it treats the graphics and sound for each of the eras. Every era looks like it would have on the original platform, either from the Game Boy up to the current-gen. Having enemies re-rendered for the future eras is neat, really showing you the evolution of gaming, but it really only is in the one starting area. By the time the rest of the world opens up, you're in the present.

The sound and music as also very reminiscent of the times, and the same song will jump from NES to SNES style music when you unlock the new era. I could immediately tell what game the background music was parodying whenever I would enter a new area, and it always brought a smile to my face when I heard it.

The Gameplay

So, I've gushed about all the good stuff there is to find in Evoland, and now here we are. There are several huge flaws with respect to the actual gameplay, which make this nostalgic romp through time nowhere near as good as it should have been.

First off, Evoland was developed using Adobe AIR, which means there is NO built-in controller support. (This is the same complaint that players of The Binding of Isaac have.) To use a controller, you'll have to use software like JoyToKey to remap the keyboard controls to them. I'll save you some time, because there is NOTHING in the options to even show you the keyboard layout, and there is no help area or manual to let you know - the arrow keys (and WASD) move you, space (and enter) are your action, TAB is your inventory, and ESC will take you to quit your game. I didn't play with a controller, but throughout the entire experience, I kept saying "You wanna know what would make this game better? A CONTROLLER." I grew up playing Zelda and Final Fantasy with a controller, and playing with a keyboard just didn't feel right.

There's also no mouse support, even though there's an entire section of Evoland devoted to a genre all about frantically clicking your mouse on things to kill them.

Because of the awkward inputs, there are a few frustrating times, especially early on when you're in one-hit kill mode. (You don't unlock hearts or a health bar for quite some time.) When you accidentally are touched by one pixel of the enemy, you're sent back to the main menu where you can continue from your last save point. Also, you are stuck fighting in the four cardinal directions, whereas the enemies can use all eight, and when you swing your sword, there is a little bit of a wait time before you can move or do another action, so if you miss their pixels, they can still hit your pixels.

These save points are very plentiful early on, but not so much later - in fact, in the first "boss fight" in the Zelda style dungeon, the save point is quite a ways back from the boss, so you have to fight your way back to him, rather than starting at the boss fight. When you get more to the overworld and later parts of the game, there aren't really any save points at all, but I was glad to see that it saves when you enter a new area, so I didn't have to go all the way back to the dungeon I died in from the village where the save point was - but a notice of that would have been nice so I wouldn't have worried so much.

The big thing to point out is the repetition. There are not that many enemy types, and while they're neat to see the first few times, when you have to face the Zoombas again (and yes, they do look like what you think they do) you're just hitting space bar repeatedly to get to the next part of the story to hopefully unlock more jokes about RPG's. There were some enemies that presented a challenge to learn their patterns (I'm looking at you, fire mage whatever thingy you are, because I hate you so much you don't even realize) but most of them were "hope you can hit them before they hit you."

There are a few puzzles to be found, but they are extremely easy variants of what you've found in other games. (Once again, the nostalgia factor comes in.) A puzzle mechanic that I wish was explored more was the main one regarding the crystals - you could use these crystals to travel through time between the current era and the 8-bit era, which allows you to do things like destroy trees that will then never grow in the future so you can get by them. These dimensional puzzles were few and far between, but were fun to try to solve when they were there.

The boss fights are pattern based much like the old days, and the patterns were simple to figure out, if maybe not so much to execute. The first two boss fights I barely escaped with just a sliver of health left even knowing their patterns, and the final boss fight (which has three forms, naturally) I couldn't even finish. Even knowing exactly what to do, I felt like I was fighting the interface to get it done, and even when it looked like I executed the move I needed to execute perfectly, I was just a fraction of a second too late, and then I eventually died. What I needed to do did not SEEM hard, but it was made artificially hard by the bad hit detection of the various elements I needed to get to in sequence, and as such left a bad taste in my mouth after the tenth time of attempting it.

The Verdict

Evoland is, on first playthrough, roughly a three hour experience. It is also (at the time of this writing) $9.99. I think that's a little bit too much for a repetitive experience that has some really questionable mechanics. Don't get me wrong, the ambiance and ideas are WONDERFUL, I really appreciate the references and all the work that went into making this game and translating it from the original contest winner, but I think that the GAMEPLAY doesn't do enough for the $10 that is expected to be spent on it. There is probably an hour or two more that can be spent getting all of the collectables (there are stars as well as cards that can be played in a card game reminiscent of Final Fantasy VIII) but even then, I don't think it justifies the price that it's currently being sold at.

I really wanted to love this game, as it was right up my alley. I think the first hour is great, but the next two hours were just too much of an exercise of repetition and frustration without introducing that many new elements to make the journey worth it. If it ever goes on sale, you may want to pick it up if you are a big fan of RPG's and action adventure games like I am just for the nostalgia factor and the smiles that the references will most certainly bring you, but I really can't easily recommend it for full price.

And that makes me cry more than Clink did when [SPOILERS REDACTED]...

Price: $9.99 (10% off during launch) on Steam and GOG.com.
Acquisition Method: GOG.com promo code provided