Evoland was a novel idea, but mediocre game. I’ve never played a game that has shined quite as bright at moments with such long stretches of uninteresting hours to separate the before mentioned shining moments. When I first bought and started Evoland I had nothing but the highest expectations for what the game was going to be. In fact I tend to have a positive bias and fondness to developers who participate in game-jams. Especially when they decide to realize those games as full fleshed out projects. However the benefit-of-the-doubt flame that burned inside me began to get snuffed out fairly early into Evoland.

Shiro Games (developer) creates a hero out of a young boy (no, really!?) who seems to need to purge the world of a darkness from what I could put together. The game already had an innate humor to it, but they escalate the comedy through various items and achievements. These moments although funny seem to get washed down by the endless amounts of grinding to the point of a random encounter every 2 seconds. I could usually handle this, since I need them xp’s! However this becomes ever more frustrating when half the game you get to use it, and the other half switches between a Diablo-esque combat system and a Legend of Zelda style which is used far more for the puzzle style dungeons.

With far too little story to keep my interested I quickly found myself losing interest. Fortunately I was rejuvenated with the introduction of Evoland’s card game Double Twin. Unfortunately I lost interest again once I had beaten the only man to play all the way through the Champion level with basic cards and no real reward for doing so. We’re all suckers for rewards in these games. It makes all the bad wash away.

Throughout the history of traditional style RPG’s there are two things I’m looking for as a player. The first being story. A good story can make me play through the most redundant and ridiculous gameplay just to get my fix. The second is gear. I will play a game for hours on end just grinding if it means rare drops. Evoland did neither of these for me, except in the Diablo-esque portion of the game. Which happens to be my favorite part of the game. If you played the Evoland then you’d know that during the Diablo-esque point in the game you get loads of loot, all fake, all hilarious.

Evoland consistently suffers from the need of to hold back. If only Shiro Games decided to have less restraint than Tom Green on speed Evoland easily would be worth the time and a huge recommend. There are a few other issues, such as pacing and bugs, that even more absurd comedic elements wouldn’t allow me to overlook and give it an 8 or 9, but it’d be a realistic 6.

The game also found itself contradicting itself with what you had unlocked and the randomness of switching gameplay mechanics at awkward moments only added to the overall games confusion. The only time this switching was explained or made sense was by the use of time altering crystals, which were used very appropriately as puzzle mechanics. These frustrating moments left me bewildered, wondering if I had missed something, or if the game really was just going to continue and contradict story. What I mean to say, and to better explain, is that the game used chests to unlock different eras that were locked away by something evil. If this were the case, why were certain areas not changing when I went back to them after I already had unlocked a newer era? Even switching between similar visual styles was jarring, and easily dismissed if they would have just put forth an effort to explain why. With how outrageous this game could have been, all it would have taken is to make mention of some sort of barrier covering certain areas of the world restricting mechanics and graphics. Possibly explained to you by a NPC, which there were far too few of as it was.

To end this before I start beating the cliche’d horse (or is it already too late?) there is a lot of potential from the small French developer. This game was a stepping stone. If they learn from their mistakes I will be very excited to learn more about their newest title.

Find this review and many others at www.PunchDrunkAlley.com