Ever since Super Meat Boy was released, the flood gates have opened for indie puzzle games of various sorts. It’s impossible to go even a month without more and more games in the genre being released, many of which are utter shovelware and not worth a second glance. Once in a while, a new title pops up with a bit more panache though. Welcome to Evergate from Stone Lantern Games and published by PQube. This is the first title from Stone Lantern and it’s above and beyond your standard indie fare. It’s beautiful, complex, and compelling. I absolutely hate it.
Now, don’t go getting all riled up just yet. I also intensely disliked Super Meat Boy, but I can appreciate the craftsmanship it represents and that’s definitely the case here. Evergate is simply a game that’s not designed for people like me. You play a soul named Ki navigating through the afterlife. Ki discovers that her soul is linked with another through lifetimes, vaguely reminiscent of some fairly powerful Hollywood movies like What Dreams May Come or Dead Again. These fading memories of various lives are the driving force behind the gameplay, which is the primary focus here.
Evergate features some rather unique puzzle solving. Rather than simply jumping around on platforms, you use the ambient afterlife soul energy coating various objects and structures in the levels to focus your willpower into Soulflame and channel it through a variety of objects creating reactions. In the beginning of the game, that means jumping up into the air, blasting a beam of focused energy through a crystal at the right angle, and then setting off the crystal, propelling you backwards away from it in whatever direction you were facing. This means that due to the level designs, you have to line up each shot perfectly and it takes a bit of a knack to get the hang of. General Soulflame blasts are mapped to the right trigger on the Switch and precision aiming to the left trigger, but I found I rarely used the precision shots.
It sounds pretty simplistic, but the physics are tricky in Evergate. Each blast depends on your distance from the crystal and your angle. Flatten your trajectory too much and you’ll under or overshoot your target. And that’s just the start. Evergate consists of ten memory books, each with its own slate of levels. Each new book you encounter adds another type of crystal and another environmental effect, making levels increasingly complex and challenging. From burning areas to warping across distances and shattering barricades, a wide variety of tools are at your disposal, all with multiple uses depending on your tactics. But that’s not all. In addition to simply solving the puzzles, there are collectibles in each level which present multiple goals for full completion. Complete a level fully and you unlock an artifact which you can then equip for bonuses in other levels to assist with the gameplay. In other words, it pays to play over and over, completing levels in multiple ways.
Many players will absolutely be obsessed with this mechanic, the detail levels of the stages, the precision required to reach hard to attain areas and so forth. Not me. I just wanted to get through each area and move on. Sure, I unlocked a few artifacts, modified how I play and had to stop and think on several levels. But mostly I found Evergate frustrating. I can see what I have to do, I know how to do it, but the game is so precise that if I miss a shot, I have to start over. And over. And over again. That’s not fun for me. I don’t like collecting items either so I found myself actively avoiding completing objectives to move on and see what the story segments brought. Unfortunately, when you complete a level, you end up with visual-only memory segments that are, well, kind of boring. At least to me. They’re gorgeous and easy to understand, but after complex puzzle solving, I found I didn’t give one whit about what was actually happening in the story and ended up starting to bypass it entirely, skimming through the obviously passionate and moving narrative with absolute dismissal. I kind of feel bad about too, since this is a game that is an obvious labor of love. The attention to detail is fantastic. It just doesn’t move me at all.
That attitude carried on to the visuals and sound design of the game too. Evergate has an outstanding visual presentation, appearing completely hand-painted. The art, the design, it’s all a masterwork. It’s an absolutely beautiful game in every aspect. It’s simply excellent, and yet somehow the visual style didn’t appeal to me. It fell flat and once again I felt bad about not appreciating the game more. The same can be said for the soundtrack to Evergate, a fully orchestrated masterpiece. But somehow, I just found most of the music grating, especially when I was consistently replaying levels to attempt to either get through or unlock an artifact, since the soundtrack loops with your refresh. On top of that, the compositions were strong, but they felt like spending the weekend at a renaissance fair in my 20s to me. That same type of peaceful flowing music interspersed with stronger melodies just ground on my senses to the point where I ended up turning the sound off in the game so I could concentrate. It’s an outrageously good soundtrack and I loathe it. In fact, every bit of Evergate I saw was beautiful, well-constructed, and entirely designed for someone other than me.
The controls were an issue as well for me. I tend to play my Switch in undocked mode at least half the time. I also have big hands, which is a rough go to begin with and I should really get a larger aftermarket controller setup. That being said, my hands were cramping up terribly with Evergate. Holding down the right trigger to aim while hitting the Y button is difficult at best and painful at worst. When I’m moving with the left stick, it’s hard to hold down the left trigger in precision mode and between the two, it was beyond easy to fail and be forced to repeat levels. It’s a unique gameplay design that simply didn’t work well for my hands. I had similar issues with other games in the past, but rarely to this degree. Constantly having to hold the button while I’m fiddling with my aim in Evergate was infuriating, and lining up shots became more and more of a chore as the game went on. Add in to that the challenging nature of the game and as I passed each book, I slowly began to dread the next level. By halfway through I was actively angry with some of the design elements and resigned to my fate.
Not every game is for everyone, no matter how good it is. And Evergate is outrageously good. If you like physics-based puzzlers, this is the cream of the crop. But it’s not for me. Not one bit. And while the soothing soundtrack, challenging gameplay, and fascinating visuals will entice and inspire many players, they entirely miss the mark for me and me alone. This is a game of pure craftsmanship, love, and planning that will keep you coming back for weeks to complete it, and you’ll definitely get your money’s worth at $20. You just can’t please everybody, and for me, that applies to Evergate. Don’t hesitate because of me though! Evergate is definitely worth your time, so delve deeply into the world of the afterlife and enjoy!
This review is based on a digital copy of Evergate provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes. Evergate is also available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on Steam. All screenshots are of actual gameplay.