It goes downhill from here.
Eversion is a light, Mario-esque platformer. It has happy music, 8-bit graphics, and a unique game mechanic. It’s unfortunately only available for Windows (though it ran without error on my Mac via Crossover). At first, it seems like somebody’s cute attempt at 1980’s era platforming game play. But very quickly it becomes clear that the game has an agenda and it’s not all blue skies and happy flowers. I won’t ruin it for you, but give the game a shot. It gets pretty hard but I advise you to stick with it. Be sure to ignore the comments on the main download page, as they will spoil it for you.
Eversion works very much like Nanashi No Geemu in that it lulls you into a comfortable zone with a familiar style. It also twists its particular knife pretty slowly; it’s not until the fifth or sixth level that you really realize how carefully the entire thing has been planned. But the result is pretty neat, once again proving that horror does not require high-end graphics tech to be effective. (Interestingly, the game also adds more weight to the idea that sound plays a much more important role in the creation of tension.)
So, another ingredient of successful horror games: familiarity as a way to surprise the player. Not every title does this, but I think that a number of the really good ones do.
http://dwilliams.deviantart.com
Jumping noises in these kinds of platformers get on your nerves (Tommy Tallarico hated them so much he didn’t make a jump sound for Earthworm Jim, he told me once), but in this game, it began to recall the sound of a kitten’s distress mew.
Thanks for the link!
*spoiler*
Brrrrrrr! I checked behind me.
a well spent half hour =D
the ending was done really well
Sounds a little like Monster Party for NES.
Heh, I enjoyed this one enough to do a review of my own on it.
Glad to hear you liked it too, Chris.
Great game… was really worth a look. Does anything happen if you pick up all the gems or am I just giving myself trouble for nothing?
By the way… it’s not only familiarity that creates extra tension, it’s degradation. Seeing something normal turn horrible is much more effective than being thrown straight in a hellish environnement. It’s seeing everything that you consider normal slowly peel away that is truly horrifying (Quite literally in Silent Hill, I’d say.)
Thought it was a very interesting game. Though I was a little disappointed that it didn’t really flesh out more then it did. Still, really cool.
I think that degradation is a secondary trait. Degradation of unfamiliar settings is not as effective: see the giant arctic base in Code Veronica, etc. It is very common that a familiar setting will become tainted, but I’m not sure that this is actually a requirement either. I think it’s the connection to familiar things that gives us a feeling of being in control, which becomes an axis for horror when that gets pulled out from under us.
I honestly found this game so frustrating that when it finally came to the eventual twist, I really began to hate it.
It’s like that 56th Street sequence in Alone In The Dark, where you repeat it so many times all the spectacle is gone and anything else thrown at you loses meaning because you’re not in the mood anymore. I just don’t like platformers in general. That and it had some pretty loose controls for such a precise game (“oh, I have to be standing EXACTLY here to dodge that?!”).
Loved the presentation and the way that you gradually got conditioned into not wanting to hit the eversion key. Obviously, this was the point of the exercise (I’m not calling it a game! No way).
But it just wasn’t for me in the end. Stupid goombas and one square platforms are horror enough for me.
aah, that was neat – i’d heard about it before, though, but thanks for showing this, as i wasnt sure *where* to find it (and then i forgot the name).
ugh, though! this game needs the option to rebind the keys! the way it’s set up, it’s basically a left-handed setting… i know old computer games did that all the time, but it’s not done much anymore, i would’ve found this game a *lot* more forgiving if i was able to bind the movement keys so i could use them with my left hand…
though maybe that was part of the horror of the game 😛 i do recall one of the things that made my heart pump the most was when i suddenly saw for the first time, after really struggling with one part and dying, “Game Over”! o_O :p
http://zarat.us/tra
The keys can be rebound by pressing TAB at the main screen.
zara: thanks, but, er, it doesnt seem to be working…
hrmm, is the button reconfig only available in 1.5b? i downloaded 1.4 (figured i’d keep away from a beta).
oh well, anyway – i dont know if you’re the creator of the game, or just the person or a person who runs the site that hosts it, but, just wanted to say, good job! 🙂 in spite of my little whine, it really is a neat game!
http://zarat.us/tra
Oops, it’s not a beta. It’s simply the second release of version 1.5. I understand how it could be taken that way tho.
Is there any intention for a sequel maybe?
aah! haha, yup, that was it ^^; and i see you changed the file’s name because of me too, oops – sorry for that, but, thanks, it’s quite thoughtful!
just played it again, with vesion 1.5, rebound keys – MUCH better. it was *really* frustrating before, i was dying constantly just because my brain wasnt wired for the configuration, and i was constantly struggling just to do the simplest thing.
Wow, there really is something if you collect all the gems, cool.
But I think that for a “gimmick” game it’s a bit too hard for the common gamer…
Er, guys, how do u deal with the clouds? O_o
hastur:
i’m guessing you’re on the first level? pay close attention to points where you’re running along and the music slightly fades/changes and the screen’s colour changes slightly – it’s at these points you evert. in the first level, when you evert, the clouds become solid and you can jump on them.
and then, if any solid clouds obstruct you, of course, you can always go back to the same spot and evert to the original state…
is this what you were thinking about?
oh, or do you mean the automatically-side scrolling stages? if that’s the case – just keep going till you reach the end.
feighnt
Yeah, that’s exactly what i was asking, thanks)
It’s like that 56th Street sequence in Alone In The Dark, where you repeat it so many times all the spectacle is gone and anything else thrown at you loses meaning because you’re not in the mood anymore. I just don’t like platformers in general. That and it had some pretty loose controls for such a precise game (“oh, I have to be standing EXACTLY here to dodge that?!”).
Loved the presentation and the way that you gradually got conditioned into not wanting to hit the eversion key. Obviously, this was the point of the exercise (I’m not calling it a game! No way).
But it just wasn’t for me in the end. Stupid goombas and one square platforms are horror enough for me.
The games frustration was part of the point. Give it another whirl, and stick with it. It’s not that long, or hard of a game, it just takes patience. However, once you seeing the ending, it was obviously, meant to frustrate you.