Evertales Review
PROS
- Easy to pick-up and play platforming gameplay.
- Beautifully varied environments.
- Large boss creatures to fight against.
CONS
- Bland platforming experience; dull AI, few real skill challenges.
- Levels rarely emphasize a character's unique traits; double-jump makes most platforming safe, floating only utilized seriously once.
- Low on content and variety in challenge; hard to justify replays.
VERDICT
Spiders and bats and mushrooms, oh my! Evertales starts out as a clever tongue-in-cheek platformer with a song and a tale to tell, but falls apart as it fails to reach an apex in gameplay, design or story.
- Full Review
- App Store Info
Evertales by Crescent Moon Games and Thunder Game Works sounds like the perfect storm of experience developer, experienced publisher and a great concept as the two companies seek to bring a Trine-like experience to the App Store. However, much of the game can be characterized by a pervading sense that everything has been cut short just before anything interesting happens, making it tease of a relatively short game.
Each of the game's six worlds are split in to two stages, ended firstly by a mini-boss and then a gigantic boss creature that often fills the screen. So far, so good you'd be saying, but the lead-up to each of these fights is quite bland as each of the three characters you can control blunder their way through simple suicidal enemies and elementary obstacles such as moving platforms and the occasional falling object.
Much like Trine, players can swap between three characters, in this case a seasoned warrior; an elvish dandy; and a senile wizard. Each are flawed in their own way, adding some sort of charm to their backgrounds, but this is lost quickly as their repeated quips (often in reference to horror/fantasy legend Bruce Campbell) destroy any sense of character and the story quickly blasts through its plot to wrap things up.
Players can choose between swipe-based or virtual-pad controls, and while the default system does make basic tasks such as platforming more challenging, it's a false sense of difficulty as the virtual-pad controls reduce the game to a simple side-scrolling romp.
Ultimately Evertales is disappointing because it never feels as though it manages to follow through on any aspect of the game. The graphics, while varied and cartoonish, feel stiff and unrefined; the story is hamstrung by the short length of the game; the levels themselves rarely exploit the uniqueness of each character; and said uniqueness is shot in the foot as purchasable weapons allow you to exchange roles at will.
If all you're after is a simple, well presented platformer, you'd do well to check out Evertales, but it's far from the best the App Store has to offer.
Screenshots
$0.99
