Everhood (2021) [Steam]

I will be expecting many great things from you. It will get harder in ways you might not be able to imagine.

-Frog, Everhood

Indie games with quirky characters and storytelling are something that have been more common in recent years. Omori and Undertale are some that come to mind that present a fun synergy in dialogue exchanges while hitting on themes that make the experience more than meets the eye. Everhood is a game that portrays these attributes along with the overarching inexpressible divine moments of truth that builds the meaning of the world we experience.

Everhood was developed with the Unity engine by Chris Nordgren and Jordi Roca who collaborated and published the game under the name Foreign Gnomes. It is an action rhythm-based RPG (I like to call it a dance battle RPG) that relies heavily on audio and crazy visuals by design. Its length hits around 6 – 8 hours, though there are six different endings to obtain.

Everhood is a visually daunting experience, as every battle scenario is different, with a variety of crazy effects. There’s also a mode outside of the story mode where you can create battles and also play story battles even if you have opened the game for the first time. You can create your own dance battles with the Battle Editor as well as play battles people online have made. There’s a diverse cast of NPCs that can range from angsty and obnoxious to cheerful and ominous. You play as a red doll whose goal is the get back its lost arm from the start of the game.

So the general idea is that Everhood is an RPG that takes a bit of a unique take on the genre. The 8-bit review will cover more of the game in detail.

The 8-bit Review

Visuals: 6/10

Everhood isn’t a graphically intensive game. It’s a 2D game for the most part as it utilizes top-down exploration. The dance battles stray away from 2D as well as some other unique portions of the world. The different visual character expressions enhance the dialogue, whether if the expression is childish, chaotic, rude, and more. The animations when moving can also be a little stagnant, but it doesn’t hinder the overall enjoyment of the game.

However, the biggest impact the visuals have is in the combat sequence as this is where they are most dynamic and focus on the gameplay. During battles, the opponent is throwing attacks at you with color-coded obstacles, accompanied by some crazy effects and narration. There is often distortion, stretching, blurring, and colorful sequencing during battle. This is probably the most divisive part of the game as it can be hard on the eyes and hard to focus on the battle at hand (more on that under Accessibility below).

Audio: 8/10

Everhood heavily relies on the audio to compliment everything else that is going on the screen during battles. The soundtrack is pretty large, with 96 songs in the track list split into three different albums, composed by Chris Nordgren and several other featured artists. There is a unique battle theme for every battle in the game.

Some battles only have a beat with maybe three layers while there are other songs with a higher production value that accompany battles that are more cinematic. During battles, the attacks are typically accompanied by whatever is going on in the song, which really makes up for a wild audio-visual experience. The overworld music is pretty varied, with upbeat tunes that convey a sense of fun, as well as ambiance in more dreary atmospheres. There’s a lot of quality in the sense that it enhances the overall experience of the game but there may be only a handful of heavy hitters. Even still, there is a lot of care put into the soundtrack to make sure that the music goes along with events that go on during battles, and that’s commendable.

Gameplay: 7/10

The gameplay in Everhood doesn’t go too in-depth. It’s fairly straightforward. During battles, the goal is to either survive by dodging everything or to deplete the health bar of the opponent. You dodge by moving left or right, and you can also jump over short attacks. You can counterattack after deflecting two attacks of the same color. Due to the simplicity of the gameplay, the game can be repetitive but a lot of the different opponents have unique gimmicks and visual tricks that keep the player on guard.

Aside from battle, there are also mini-games that you can play in Everhood as well. There are also challenges in the over-world of the game that require you to move through obstacles. If running was activated by holding a button rather than having to double-tap a directional input then it would be more convenient and less tedious to go through those segments.

Narrative: 8/10

(Potential spoilers are in this section, so if you want to avoid them, skip down to the Accessibility section below)

In Everhood, you wake up as the wooden doll, Red (or Red Mage), who has had its arm stolen. Red finds out who stole its arm and aims to get it back. That’s the main objective for a chunk of the game.

As Red visits the various areas of Everhood, it interacts with many unique characters, a couple mini-games and shenanigans, and people who want to stop it from getting its arm back. The game tries to do a good job of getting you attached to everything you encounter throughout this adventure. It keeps NPCs unique and the writing gives each character personality and humor.

There are a couple of hints with some NPCs that there is more than meets the eye. You eventually learn more about Red, its real intentions, and the truth of Everhood. It’s not a very complex plot, but the writing is fun, especially with beloved characters such as Green Mage. Everhood has themes of immortality and being mindful of death. As such, Everhood does a good job making sure that you are in for the long haul as events unfold.

Accessibility: 7/10

As mentioned in the Visuals section, the visuals are intense. There are two accessibility options: image sensitivity and color-blind. The color blind option is there to code opponent attacks with symbols as well as color. The image sensitivity is essentially supposed to make battles easier on the eyes and decrease the insensitivity of some effects.

Everhood has some flashing lights so naturally, there is a warning when you open the game that addresses epilepsy. Foreign Gnomes has used Harding FPA (a tool that analyzes photosensitivity from Cambridge Research Systems) and they’ve found that the game is very safe to play even with accessibility options off.

There are difficulty options such as easy, normal, hard, expert, insane, and story mode. If you want to play through the game with minimal chances of dying then the story mode option is the option to pick for people who don’t play video games and are just in it for the story. The other options just determine how much health you have and how fast you regenerate HP. There are options for all types of players to choose from here.

Challenge: 7/10

Depending on the difficulty the player chooses, Everhood can be easy, very difficult, or balanced normal. Picking normal means that once you get the feel for playing the game, you can follow patterns for evading. Anyone who gets a good grip on the gameplay can eventually get through each enemy fight with ease until the challenge ramps up near the end of the game.

You can also enable or disable checkpoints that are present in certain fights and if you die, you just restart from that point. The difficulty can be adjusted to whatever is suited to the player. The hardest fights in the game are the optional fights in case players decide to do the extra content in New Game+.

Uniqueness: 6/10

The audio-visual experience is what really sets this game apart from other indies. It has some fairly obvious inspirations from the cast of Undertale, and the decision-making in battle is also something that it has in common with that game. There are a couple of characters that pay a sort of homage to Undertale in one way or another. There are characters that play very similar roles in the plot as well.

It’s not the most unique experience in the sense that the characters and themes may draw some inspiration from other games but the most unique thing about this game is easily the dance battle system. Since the music is in sync with the battles, the synergy between music and battle makes every encounter seem unique. It’s difficult to compare to other games, even those Everhood has taken inspiration from.

Personal: 8/10

The game caught my attention when I saw the dance battle gameplay. I love rhythm games and role-playing games and fast-paced gameplay so I was sure I was in for something unique. The experience became memorable and I really enjoyed the shenanigans that Everhood presented. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys rhythm games, ominous story games, and games that are accessible to beat for it being short. Everhood is an experience that I thought was well worth the time and challenge, and I find the nutty visuals mesmerizing!

Aggregated Score: 7.1

I’m Zerinus, a hobbyist video game lover, music lover, writer, and a professional in IT. You can find me at @DivineZerinus on Twitter.