The history of this game goes back to the year 2012, not so long ago, when the 24th Ludum Dare competition took place. The contest is one of the most prestigious and at the same time one of the most unusual virtual game development contests. According to its terms, a participant has to create a game from scratch within two days. The contest is insanely popular, except that traditionally the winner does not receive any tangible prize; the only prize is a very solid boost to one’s reputation in the game development community. In the 24th competition Evoland Classic was voted the best game out of 1405 submissions. Inspired by this success, the creators decided to create a full-fledged game project on the basis of the compiled competition game.
The concept of the game is based on a kind of journey through time, taking the user through the evolutionary path of the action/RPG genre.
The game begins with the Game Boy era. Then the user is offered a small excursion into the world of eight- and sixteen-bit consoles. The player then finds themselves in the PlayStation era and gradually moves on to the PS2. The game is sure to please veteran gamers, who will enjoy visiting the world of the good old Zelda.
Changes in graphics and gameplay occur then suddenly and then so smoothly that the user doesn’t even notice how they’ve gone from a pixel retro and grey-green screen to a smooth scrolling game world filled with a whole gamut of colours.
When the developers approached the time of the Nintendo 64, they decided to put the emphasis not on the unusual interactive video entertainment, as it was from the beginning of the game, but on the gameplay itself. And many users consider it to be a fatal mistake that ruined the magic of Evoland.
The game ceased to be impressive diorama and fascinating excursion into the history and became very trivial action with two heroes – a boy and a girl, who look for some evil creature and defeat it in the final battle. Gamers were disappointed that the game’s creators allowed themselves not even an homage, but almost a direct quote. Characters: almost a spitting image of Link from The Legend of Zelda and Aeris from Final Fantasy VII.
As soon as the game moved on to quoting its iconic predecessors, there was a lot of repetition. Gamers will have to engage in FF-style, turn-based battles. Also have to remember “Zelda” when going down into the dungeon, will have to smash clay pots with his sword.
Alas, in this part of the game the script does not shine with originality or wit, or any tricks. But there is a lot of illogic and things that cause outright confusion among gamers. For example, crushing the opponents gives no pleasure, because you can kill any of the opponents with a single shot. And the puzzles are so simple that even a relatively advanced pre-schooler would probably consider them a personal affront.
But the scariest part is that, in their enthusiasm for creating a “game within a game”, the developers seem to have forgotten their main task – to create a virtual historical diorama dedicated to the development of computer games. In particular, Mario appears repeatedly in the RPG segment for some reason. Didn’t the developers understand themselves and no one told them during the testing phase that such cameos are completely inappropriate in this case? And in the episode dedicated to Diablo, you can easily recognise the appeals to Blizzard.
Evoland is one of the most controversial game projects, where brilliance coexists with simply spectacular failures.