The Evolution Of RPGs

Disclaimer

I am writing about this game, because I’m found it to be an original idea, and thought it might interest anyone. I am in no way affiliated with the Shiro Games. I have not been paid for this text, and I have bought the game with my own money. In short: This is not an advertisment.

I recently stumbled across this funny little game, called Evoland. It is basically a role playing game, that, during the course of the game, let’s you walk through the history of the genre. At that quite literally: When the game starts, you see a low resulution LCD-style graphic that looks a lot like that from the original Game Boy. You can only move to the right until you encounter a chest. That will unlock the move left. Next you get full 2D-Movement, smoother scrolling, gradually more colors and so on.

You can also collect stars, coins and trading cards, just like in any other RPG. The combat system changes from simple press-a-button through turn based fights to Diablo style hack-and-slay.

I think the idea of the game is quite exciting, and for everyone who grew up in the 1990 it’s a trip down memory lane. Everytime you unlock a new feature, you’ll get a witty line referencing the new feature (not all of which I understood, maybe you need to be older than me, and know things like the NES from actual experinece, and not only from stories). The game has some serious setbacks though. First of all, you can play though all of it in about four hours. In the areas were you do round based fights, they pop up randomly, and you cannot see the monsters coming on the map. And the monsters attack quite often. When you just unlocked the round based fighting, this is fun, but after a while, it’s just becoming a pain in the proverbial. And then there is the complete lack of a background story.

Despite all this, the game gets credits from me for it’s originality, and it is fun to play. It only costs a few quid, and it is fun enough to spent a rainy afternoon with. If you want to test the game, you can do so, by using the original free version of Evoland on their website. The full game is available on the Evoland website or via Steam.