Everhood

For me, this game was a mixed bag. I think I’ll start with the positives. The visuals are absolutely the highlight of this game, at least with regards to how absolutely insane, psychedelic, and vibrant they are, though definitely take note of those epilepsy warnings. The combination of high contrast and filters can add to the challenge of the game and is very unique. The soundtrack’s decent too, though it’s not something I think I’ll be going back to often. It works when it needs to.

I think the general gameplay loop is rather fun too. It’s not really a rhythm game as notes are released to the beat, but it still takes a couple of seconds for you to actually have to dodge them. It’s cool though, and you can get a lot of enjoyment from dodging and attacking back (done by absorbing notes). Obviously the game takes twists with this, including notes that you can’t jump over, notes that do extra damage, and notes that you can’t absorb, so it’s kept pretty varied throughout the run time. Combining that with the wide array of filters and kaleidoscopic visuals meant to throw you off constantly keeps you on your toes. The difficulty settings are also very accommodating, which I appreciate a lot. I do wish sprinting wasn’t as poor though, it’s maybe one of the weakest implementations I’ve seen in a game (double tap to run, can’t sprint diagonally, and changing directions loses sprint).

SPOILERS:
Where the game falls apart for me is the story, and that is sad because it clearly relies on being emotionally resonant. In essence, the jaunty, quirky 1st half for me actively undermines the last half’s twist & message. The first part introduces you to around 30 Everhood inhabitants with an Undertale-inspired tone but doesn’t really delve into any, most are reduced to singular traits (ex. the disaffected young worker, the vampire that changes his name each time you speak to them, the other vampire who sneezes a lot). It feels like the only characters that shine are Blue Thief & Green Mage (go figure, they’re the most popular characters). I think this is the game’s biggest fumble, there’s too many characters it needs to get you emotionally invested in for the last act to work and is too vague until the twist. You go on wacky fun hijinks, but it feels aimless as it doesn’t build to your goal of getting your arm and why you’re doing it besides it being yours.

The second half of this game consists of you using your arm to kill every inhabitant of the realm; the premise being that this world is inhabited by immortals who have both forgotten their previous existence as mortals and lost their minds due to immortal boredom, and they stole your arm as you’re essentially the Grim Reaper, meant to send them to the next cycle of life instead of keeping them in existential agony. The message of “immortality is a curse” is not inherently flawed and I’ve enjoyed plenty of media with similar messages, my problem is the game does a very poor job of convincing you that this is what’s best for the inhabitants, especially given the tone and hijinks of the 1st half.

The only evidence of the world’s origins before the twist are three lore notes, besides that none of the characters’ attitudes really point to them suffering in immortality or wanting to die (bar Green’s infinitely tallied wall), and this is mainly due to the goofy tone the game takes in the first half. Additionally it feels a bit weird that the characters are simultaneously going insane from supposedly "running out of things to do" but also suffering selective amnesia, like do those not cancel each other out? Some people point to the Lost Spirits as evidence that those currently living in Everhood are preventing these spirits (who presumably died before the events of the game, whether by the protagonist or by other causes like the Incinerator) from moving on, but the same notes imply that the right to go to Everhood was granted to millions, so why did those millions get to move on?

Additionally, the game does some of that player critique that Undertale does once you go onto the intended path of murdering absolutely everyone, including Frog (the character who’s been trying to convince you to end this realm’s existence and has been portrayed as the character fighting for the "right ideals"), who when asked about why this was necessary, explicitly says that the protagonist "wanted to experience this... Becoming death incarnated". This is normally fine given the initial framing of this twist, but the game provides none of the choice that made UT’s critique of the player’s actions affecting so it falls somewhat flat. If you explicitly choose to not kill, you engage in a separate battle with Frog. Managing to outlast them results in Frog being revealed to be a Lost Spirit and is then allowed to leave Everhood. It makes the previous point about “killing everyone to allow everyone including the Lost Spirits to move on” muddied because why is Frog allowed to move on and not the other Lost Spirits?

After said battle, the game allows you to load back into the save and complete the game as normal, so it doesn’t even really qualify as an ending. I wish this was an actual bad ending, or at least upon loading had shown a marked shift in the characters' dialogue, accepting that their continued existence is pain, and that they wish to move on. As it stands, the characters both feel one note such that I struggled to care for the vast majority when it came time to kill them, yet undeserving of death given their feelings. It feels like the game is unfairly manipulating the player by having these NPCs fear for their lives, then 5 minutes before credits roll suddenly do a 180 and thank us for killing them while they wait for the next cycle of life.

I think my last critiques of the story is that its main route really doesn’t know when to end; there are essentially 4 “final bosses”, you can feel the ending stretching itself thin with each one, and the other endings raise more questions than answers and are unsatisfying. After the Cat God fight, why is Orange building a second body for Pink if they've been opposed to us for the entirety of the game? The secret Dev fight just ends with credits (and you have to go on a fetch quest to even unlock it), and the Corridor ending is essentially just the Pacifist one (choosing to not kill, but being allowed to come back and finish the job) but you wasted 4 hours walking down a corridor. Considering how difficult the requirements and fights are, these are some crummy endings. I, for one am glad to have turned down the difficulty for the former two endings and avoided the latter ending entirely. I would have genuinely put down my rating by another star had I wasted 3 or more hours of my life doing the superbosses. As someone who loves delving into the deeper lore of media, I received little satisfaction. The game's story does give off a very psychedelic feeling to go along with the graphics, but it's just not really compelling due to the lack of real characterization, and its bizarre impulse to twist and turn, or be reticent rather than be coherent.

It’s unfortunate that it failed to click with me despite the solid gameplay and being recommended to me by friends. Maybe I am reading too much into this story that should be taken at face value and not read into that deeply despite the philosophical themes. It almost feels like keeping the game entirely off the wall like the first half would have been better as it was clearly more in their wheelhouse. Even if the characters fell flat, at least it was fun and honest, because it really feels that the lack of sincerity, satisfaction, its poorly executed subversions/messaging in the 2nd half twist and all the alternate endings damages the game immensely. Ultimately, it still hasn’t escaped my mind because I really felt it had a lot of potential, and I hope Foreign Gnomes can learn a lot from this experience as they clearly have good chops in visuals, aesthetic, and gameplay.

Underhood, i mean Evertale, I mean Everhood is absolutely psychedelic indie game that likes to really play spot the references with imagery that might be too close to Undertale (and some others a bit too close to Yume Nikki as well).

Just as Undertale brought in a mixture of RPG styled battles mixed with Bullet hell mechanics, Everhood moves in with pseudo-rhythm based battles that

The game has some funny gags and the occasional groaner, the game doesn't quite have the emotional core that it kind of desires. The story is occasionally confusing which leads to a mildly unsatisfactory end note where characters have to explain everything. I enjoyed interacting with the cast of characters but there's no real character arch with them as there was with let's say Undine in Undertale. They are all mostly quirk.

Normally a game with this many issues I would rank lower but it's overtly throw everything at the wall and see what sticks nature gives it a +half star rating. The happiness in seeing the screen warp and twist around or just throwing you into pits of wild colours might make gaming purists scoff, but I found it a fun change of pace from the norm which made me look forward to newer battles.

Not perfect, but if you enjoy things tagged with the word "psychedelic" and "quirky" you can do much worse with Everhood.