EVAN'S REMAINS review - Puzzle Paradise
(Reviewed by Melody Werner)
Evan's Remains is a 2020 side-scrolling puzzle-platformer (that's also a visual novel hybrid) developed by Matías Schmied (or maitan69) and collaborators, and published by Whitethorn Games (or Whitethorn Digital). The game first caught my eye during its successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019, and after that I followed it to its release this summer. A little under a week ago, I applied for a review code via Keymailer, for the purposes of covering the game, and was supplied one by Whitethorn. That said, these are my honest opinions regarding Evan's Remains--as a creator myself, I know I personally wouldn't want people holding back on how they truly feel about my work, because criticism is how we learn areas where we can improve. With Evan's Remains, I think that while there is room for growth, it is a very good release well worth checking out.
Evan's Remains boasts some gorgeous, lush environments that are great fun to explore. I spent quite a bit of time screenshotting sweeping vistas and eye-catching buildings--far more than I'd ever need for this review--because they're so damn pretty. But I wouldn't want to underestimate how nice the pixel art and animations are for the characters, because they're lovely too. Dysis, the main character, is particularly well-animated, with her hair billowing in the wind upon jumping--it's superlative. The quality pixel art extends to the character portraits for the visual novel-esque segments, which are incredibly expressive and fun. What's more, the musical score provides some lovely chiptunes--it's worth picking up on its own, if you're into video game soundtracks.
When it comes to the gameplay, Evan's Remains is slick and refined. There aren't a thousand different underlying systems at play, as you might see in a Zachtronics title (not to slag Zachtronics, just for the sake of comparison)--you jump onto platforms and try to figure out how to solve each puzzle (labeled a "monolith") in a way that allows you to proceed to the next monolith. Simple stuff, it's not seeking to be too taxing, but it can still be a wee tricky if you're just brute-forcing your way through or not considering all of the game logic in action. You also can read the visual novel side of things, though the storyline is kinetic--IE, there are no split endings, and there's no roleplaying, or anything like that. Conveniently, you don't have to play both halves of the game if you, say, just want to read a kinetic visual novel or play a clean puzzle-platformer. Everything is skippable, so if you have a problem with a puzzle or if a visual novel sequence drags for you, you can get onto the next bit, that you will hopefully enjoy more. Or, say you're replaying the game and don't want to go through the same dialogue, you can skip that too. I appreciate the accessibility factor that has been so thoughtfully taken into account, even though I personally went through everything fairly easily--it's a breeze to play. Every puzzle takes a certain level of thought to solve, but it never left me stumped. After maybe a minute of scrutinizing each monolith, the path forward became obvious. They're elegantly designed and hugely satisfying to surpass. All of this and the fact that there's nothing even resembling combat adds to an atmosphere that is laid-back, tropical, and airy. Which is kinda Whitethorn's modus operandi in action, if that's your speed. Between this and We should talk., I'm digging their games quite a lot and they seem to treat their developers right--which is incredibly important when we have prestige devs like Naughty Dog, CD Projekt Red, and Rockstar forcing their workers into extended periods of excessive crunch, yet receive a pass because of their prestige as studios. Obviously I have no personal experience to speak from, but what I've heard of them is incredibly promising.
Where Evan's Remains has me confused is with its writing. Typos (there aren't too many of those, but they are present) and mildly clunky lines of dialogue aside, I was mostly enjoying the story for the bulk of my playthrough. Our characters are for the most part delightful, and there were a few funny lines that had me grinning. The world was mysterious, and I was eager to witness as its layers began to unravel. And as those began to and I thought it was ending, I was incredibly satisfied--that is, until the narrative drowns you in a dozen curveballs and unnecessary details that feel so mountainous. For the sake of spoilers, I'm not going to say that I prefer happy or miserable endings and elude to which one this has--in fact, I'm fine with both, and I'm equally as fine with ones that leave you feeling conflicted emotionally. What I will say is, the ending here left me feeling conflicted in a way that was unintentional. Did every solitary detail of this convoluted plot need to be explained to me? And why is Dysis rendered so meaningless because of it? Did we need the whole red herring of an ending? Because it just makes the more convoluted explanation look even more convoluted by comparison. What made me more conflicted still, and which is why I wouldn't say that this game ends badly, is that its post-credits sequence is beautiful and the message the ending in general is trying to present is something I can absolutely get down with. I can see what the intent was--to craft something that felt like an emotional roller coaster ride, but if this was a roller coaster (and I live in Florida, so you know that it's a field of expertise for me), it'd be one of those ones that rockets you to and fro, peak to trough, so much that it leaves you feeling more numb than exhilarated by its conclusion. It's not horrendous, but it does feel too jarring to say that it adds to the experience.
Evan's Remains is a game that I thoroughly recommend--it's a great time--but which fumbles the ball story-wise towards its completion, at least for me. As a hybrid, it feels like one half is exceptional and the other is good but a lil rickety--not bad, but rougher than I'd wanna see it. If you split this up, I'd say the puzzle-platforming is in a high 9 range, and the visual novel reading is 7 ish. That's if you need the numerical to get a good feel for where I'd put this. If you don't care about numbers, you don't care, I guess. (Just don't complain about them to me, because they're genuinely helpful to some people.) So I think an 8.5/10 is fair. If it had stuck with one of the endings, it'd be so much more satisfying to me. Both made sense, but sticking them up against one another just makes me say, "That other explanation would've been better, it didn't make me have to mangle my brain."
Great
Summary:
An admirable attempt at melding puzzle-platforming with a kinetic visual novel, though the former is noticeably stronger than the latter. Stunning visuals and music sell the atmosphere it's going for well. Highly recommended, though hopefully the next game from this dev will be even better.
Evan's Remains is a 2020 side-scrolling puzzle-platformer (that's also a visual novel hybrid) developed by Matías Schmied (or maitan69) and collaborators, and published by Whitethorn Games (or Whitethorn Digital). The game first caught my eye during its successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019, and after that I followed it to its release this summer. A little under a week ago, I applied for a review code via Keymailer, for the purposes of covering the game, and was supplied one by Whitethorn. That said, these are my honest opinions regarding Evan's Remains--as a creator myself, I know I personally wouldn't want people holding back on how they truly feel about my work, because criticism is how we learn areas where we can improve. With Evan's Remains, I think that while there is room for growth, it is a very good release well worth checking out.
Evan's Remains boasts some gorgeous, lush environments that are great fun to explore. I spent quite a bit of time screenshotting sweeping vistas and eye-catching buildings--far more than I'd ever need for this review--because they're so damn pretty. But I wouldn't want to underestimate how nice the pixel art and animations are for the characters, because they're lovely too. Dysis, the main character, is particularly well-animated, with her hair billowing in the wind upon jumping--it's superlative. The quality pixel art extends to the character portraits for the visual novel-esque segments, which are incredibly expressive and fun. What's more, the musical score provides some lovely chiptunes--it's worth picking up on its own, if you're into video game soundtracks.
When it comes to the gameplay, Evan's Remains is slick and refined. There aren't a thousand different underlying systems at play, as you might see in a Zachtronics title (not to slag Zachtronics, just for the sake of comparison)--you jump onto platforms and try to figure out how to solve each puzzle (labeled a "monolith") in a way that allows you to proceed to the next monolith. Simple stuff, it's not seeking to be too taxing, but it can still be a wee tricky if you're just brute-forcing your way through or not considering all of the game logic in action. You also can read the visual novel side of things, though the storyline is kinetic--IE, there are no split endings, and there's no roleplaying, or anything like that. Conveniently, you don't have to play both halves of the game if you, say, just want to read a kinetic visual novel or play a clean puzzle-platformer. Everything is skippable, so if you have a problem with a puzzle or if a visual novel sequence drags for you, you can get onto the next bit, that you will hopefully enjoy more. Or, say you're replaying the game and don't want to go through the same dialogue, you can skip that too. I appreciate the accessibility factor that has been so thoughtfully taken into account, even though I personally went through everything fairly easily--it's a breeze to play. Every puzzle takes a certain level of thought to solve, but it never left me stumped. After maybe a minute of scrutinizing each monolith, the path forward became obvious. They're elegantly designed and hugely satisfying to surpass. All of this and the fact that there's nothing even resembling combat adds to an atmosphere that is laid-back, tropical, and airy. Which is kinda Whitethorn's modus operandi in action, if that's your speed. Between this and We should talk., I'm digging their games quite a lot and they seem to treat their developers right--which is incredibly important when we have prestige devs like Naughty Dog, CD Projekt Red, and Rockstar forcing their workers into extended periods of excessive crunch, yet receive a pass because of their prestige as studios. Obviously I have no personal experience to speak from, but what I've heard of them is incredibly promising.
Where Evan's Remains has me confused is with its writing. Typos (there aren't too many of those, but they are present) and mildly clunky lines of dialogue aside, I was mostly enjoying the story for the bulk of my playthrough. Our characters are for the most part delightful, and there were a few funny lines that had me grinning. The world was mysterious, and I was eager to witness as its layers began to unravel. And as those began to and I thought it was ending, I was incredibly satisfied--that is, until the narrative drowns you in a dozen curveballs and unnecessary details that feel so mountainous. For the sake of spoilers, I'm not going to say that I prefer happy or miserable endings and elude to which one this has--in fact, I'm fine with both, and I'm equally as fine with ones that leave you feeling conflicted emotionally. What I will say is, the ending here left me feeling conflicted in a way that was unintentional. Did every solitary detail of this convoluted plot need to be explained to me? And why is Dysis rendered so meaningless because of it? Did we need the whole red herring of an ending? Because it just makes the more convoluted explanation look even more convoluted by comparison. What made me more conflicted still, and which is why I wouldn't say that this game ends badly, is that its post-credits sequence is beautiful and the message the ending in general is trying to present is something I can absolutely get down with. I can see what the intent was--to craft something that felt like an emotional roller coaster ride, but if this was a roller coaster (and I live in Florida, so you know that it's a field of expertise for me), it'd be one of those ones that rockets you to and fro, peak to trough, so much that it leaves you feeling more numb than exhilarated by its conclusion. It's not horrendous, but it does feel too jarring to say that it adds to the experience.
Evan's Remains is a game that I thoroughly recommend--it's a great time--but which fumbles the ball story-wise towards its completion, at least for me. As a hybrid, it feels like one half is exceptional and the other is good but a lil rickety--not bad, but rougher than I'd wanna see it. If you split this up, I'd say the puzzle-platforming is in a high 9 range, and the visual novel reading is 7 ish. That's if you need the numerical to get a good feel for where I'd put this. If you don't care about numbers, you don't care, I guess. (Just don't complain about them to me, because they're genuinely helpful to some people.) So I think an 8.5/10 is fair. If it had stuck with one of the endings, it'd be so much more satisfying to me. Both made sense, but sticking them up against one another just makes me say, "That other explanation would've been better, it didn't make me have to mangle my brain."
Great
Summary:
An admirable attempt at melding puzzle-platforming with a kinetic visual novel, though the former is noticeably stronger than the latter. Stunning visuals and music sell the atmosphere it's going for well. Highly recommended, though hopefully the next game from this dev will be even better.
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