Evertales Review

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Evertales Review

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Evertales Review

By Carter Dotson on November 10th, 2011
Our Rating:

:: FRACTURED FAIRY TALE
Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad

Evertales is a platformer with graphics enhanced for the latest iOS devices, and a 3-character mechanic, each with their own attributes and attacks.

Developer: Thunder Game Works
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Device Reviewed On: iPad 1, iPad 2

Graphics / Sound Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Game Controls Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Gameplay Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Replay Value Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Overall Rating: 3.63 out of 5 stars

Evertales, developed by is a comical platformer that satirizes fantasy genre tropes in a 2.5D platformer. Players control a trio of misfit adventurers as they try to defeat the aptly-named Dark Lord of Darkness. Sir Jorgin is a slow, beefy, powerful melee type. Arwick is an elf who uses primarily ranged weapons and has a double-jump to help navigate environments. Taragorn is an old, slightly senile wizard who can float to the ground and cast projectile spells. Each of the 3 characters can be switched between at will, which is often necessary to clear certain obstacles in levels.

Evertales has a good sense of humor to it; the narrator is very farcical and referential in his dialog, and all the characters play as comically exaggerated versions of fantasy archetypes. Plus, the hearts are actual hearts, which is a touch that symbolizes the mood of the whole game. A5 device owners will notice the game takes advantage of the powerful hardware with faster frame rates, normal mapping, and bloom lighting! In fact, the bloom lighting on the iPad 2 was turned up to 11. Everything is so blooming blooming! It’s a bit much, but I paid good money for this iPad 2. I want everything to have bloom lighting!

The game is fairly short; the 12 levels can be beaten in a couple of hours, and with unlimited lives, there’s really no risk of failure. The boss fights are nothing to iMessage home about, most of them just require knowing when to jump, and which character’s attack to spam in order to kill the boss. The three character design feels very woefully underused. See, Arwick, the double-jumping elf, is the most useful character because of his agility, which makes it easier to advance through the levels and collect coins. Taragorn, the wizard, is useful because of his spells and floating jump, but he’s still way less used than Arwick was for me. Jorgin was practically useless; he is good against most enemies, but he takes a lot of damage because of being up close, and playing as him through most sections means a lot of missed coins since he can barely jump. It just all feels improperly balanced when one character feels like a vestigial organ on this whole system.

Evertales is beautiful, and the multiple character design is novel, but it never feels quite properly used here, and the length at launch gives me pause. For $0.99, it’s worth the risk, and updates could certainly flesh out the game and the character usage. There’s potential in the concepts here, but execution still needs some work.