N-Philes

Thank you, internet.

Posted June 22nd 2009 by Adam Glasgow.

Last night while avoiding doing anything that might resemble being productive I stumbled on Eversion - a free to download old school style platformer. It came out at the end of last year, but it's new to me. The looks are cutesy, but we start with a quote from H.P. Lovecraft and a warning that reads "NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN OR THOSE WITH A NERVOUS DISPOSITION." This is, of course, a joke, but it ends up being a little closer to the truth than I originally thought. Looking at the readme file reveals the story, which is as follows. (No joke.)

princess is kidnapped

you must save princess

Well they get points for being concise, at least.

At first things appear to be pretty standard. Controls are simple - the arrow keys are used to run around, z to jump, and x does something called "eversion," which doesn't seem to do much of anything. So you're running around, collecting little gems, jumping on bad guys and having a pretty decent time. Then you find an area where the screen changes colors slightly, so you try out that "eversion" button. Pressing it warps you into a Zelda-esque dark world, where things are less cheery, but certain objects that you weren't able to interact with before are now of use to you. Keep going and you'll quickly figure out that there are multiple depths to this dark world, and you'll have to figure out when and where to go back and forth between them to collect all the gems to get the best ending. The first ending I got was pretty unsettling, I must say.

There are times in the game where the tone is so starkly different to what you first expected that things actually do feel a little creepy. It's still simple, 8-bit looking graphics, but the striking juxtaposition is enough to make you feel uncomfortable. I mean, it's not going to keep you up at night (unless you're a gigantic wuss), but it is there, and it's certainly worth experiencing.

I shouldn't have to talk you into trying this game. I mean, it's free. So grab it and give it a try. You'll like it. Unless you're dumb.

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