EVOLAND : Review

Hop, a new free game, after refinement, forces its way to the pay model after the approval of the community on Steam Greenlight. "Encore!" exclaim some history ... make a little disillusioned, there is question of retro-gaming or even meta retro-gaming. While some will not fail to vanish just by reading this shameless barbarism, others are probably now curious to know what it is. Luckily, the concept of Evoland is very friendly.

Developed in forty-eight hours Nicolas Cannasse in the twenty-fourth Ludum Dare, the game won the first prize in this game jam in August 2012, whose theme was imposed changes. After a few months of polishing the game disposes of Classic that captioning on browser and we arrive in a hormone-boosted and enriched version of three-dimensional graphics. Prepare yourself for an overview course on the legendary RPG that rocked the childhood of many of the current players.

CHILDREN'S ART

In the beginning was the Word. Closely followed by the ASCII representations and later still by the monochrome graphics. Evoland overcomes the textual genesis to tell his story and role-playing adventure from the third age. Even so, the road is long and difficult task. From the late 80s to the present day, many sagas have emerged under this name: Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Zelda ... Therefore, references are teeming, and a good crop of consoles today called " retro "is necessary to seize on the evocations that will fall on us from the very first steps. How else notice the resemblance of our character with Link, or the little music that accompanies each trunk? The oldies find emotionally sword Cloud aircraft endgame to travel freely on the map of the continent, the sacrosanct villages inhabited by the NPC unlikely behaviors and sellers granting insane commissions by emptying the pockets of the hero of a few thousand gil against a rusty blade. Here as elsewhere, our character does not really have a business sense.

This does not, however, prevents it from all offer some cosmetic adjustments throughout its epic. The poor start in a side scroller in black and white that the display consists of a long strip of pixels of a few centimeters high. Through a carefully placed on the trunk road, the horizontal band turns into a large rectangle taking the whole screen, and lateral movement gains an additional axis: we are facing a game for filling any air monitor . The principle is more or less the same as in DLC Quest. Exploring its environment, our avatar unlocks gradually features that ordinary people now considered acquired, except that it is not a question of pay. Eighty percent improvements are obtained by collecting large opening cross trunks path, representing the passage of time, bringing with it new technologies. Shades of gray are replaced by summary colors, then their 16-bit counterpart, before the third dimension is invited to the party. The music follows the same path and jumps in silence minimalist chiptune before gaining complexity.


QUESTS AND TENDER AGE OF WOOD

The past, however, can not be revived in appearance to a genre as tote the RPG. It all starts with a bit of action with the discovery that our weapon balance then directly on the sprites of enemies in the forest starting. As in Zelda, it soon becomes able to cut the bushes that block our passage. Leaving this first zone, the world is growing: we are on a map Mode 7 embellished his famous fighting random turn, contained the equally famous ATB gauge which, when filled, allows us to perform a Action from a list evolves over hours and levels. Levels also can not from the outset be crossed And yes, there is also a bonus to find it. Next is our first dungeon in which he will of course solve various puzzles based switches hidden evil and one-way mazes. On the end of the game, it's even entitled to a cellar way in which Diablo Life Gauge takes the appearance of a big red ball to complete thanks to the orbs dropped by the hordes of spiders from the impaled chain on our sword.

Designed for gamers in walker and wearing nevertheless a nostalgic look full of tenderness on the old glories of a bygone era, Evoland also shows a slight humor, pointing some flaws and grotesque mechanisms references. Halfway through, we find such an artifact activating zoom camera openings chests come so slightly slowing down the gameplay. Earlier, the houses of the village déverrouillaient magically and were accompanied by a strong comment about: "You can now embed you in everyone!" Elsewhere Finally, while our team is bullied by a boss, bad turn of events enrages our blond who gets magically special attack. As expected, the invocation of Bahamut inflicts several hundred damage to the enemy in a single application, and it runs away swearing that he will come back for revenge. Much faster than our thrusting blows removing him nine points of life miserable every time. Damage still the ultimate attack does not reach the limit of 999 points of damage overpowered as previously required propriety.


GAMER'S DIGEST

The draft Nicolas Cannasse is highly engaging and draw effortlessly knowing smiles to all those who spent their youth on the old machines from Nintendo and Sony. However, as said the deceased Zouave, time does not alter the case. Cons obsolete and cons beginners will complain equally from the poverty of the gameplay and the brevity of the trip in the past. Because it evokes and pokes gentle fun, Evoland never really managed to revive. Part action-RPG suffers from very stiff movements and precise little attack against enemies eerily random behavior. The turn-on it is sealed by a hungry choice of actions to perform. And of course, controls are confined to single keyboard even though the games are mostly singled out from the middle console. Another huge weak point, the session ends in three hours by my watch if you ferreting around four or five large maximum for that attempt to discover some secrets and hidden dungeons. The rate advertised, we would have liked adventure extends a little, especially the history is far from complete.

In addition, some good ideas would probably deserved to be a little more used. Already this mini-game, without being incredibly complex is nice and have won multiply the possible opponents and collectible cards. And last grove in which it becomes possible through crystals alternate between the urge 2D and 3D puzzles offered enough fun to hang out a bit long. In this case, unfortunately, the title will only make you smile those who remember its many winks without ever managing to bring back what made them love the mechanics of time. And younger, apart from a few archaeologists fail to derive some pleasure whatsoever, sealed in this tribute to the 90s.