Hi guys, I'm Joy and I hope you will enjoy my review of Evan's Remains!
Evan's Remains is a story driven puzzle platformer with a beautiful pixelated art style and a very mysterious plot. You play as Dysis, a girl who is hired to find this boy genius called Evan on this strange island. Along the way you come across all these monoliths and a boy called Clover. In the beginning Clover kinda ignores you and is only focused on writing in his notebook, but later on he opens up more about his reason for visiting this island after you spend more time with each other.
To avoid spoilers this is where I will stop talking about the story, I highly recommend you to play this game just for the story alone. It's full of twists and turns and you never can predict where it is going next.
Evan's Remains is more like a visual novel than a puzzle platformer to be honest, because it's full of cutscenes with a lot of dialogue, so prepare yourself for a lot of reading and pressing the button to continue the dialogue. It can become a bit tedious if you didn't expect this much dialogue in the game, but I found the story very intriguing and didn't mind it that much.
These monoliths you come across are the puzzles in this game and they are made out of all kinds of platforms, like platforms that disappear when you jump off them, platforms that function as a reset button, platforms that launch you in the air depending on how far the fall distance is, platforms that let you teleport and platforms that change certain other platforms just to name a few. It's pretty straightforward and solving these puzzles is pretty relaxing and a fun time. Some of them can be a nice challenge, but if they are too challenging for you, you can always go for the option to skip the puzzle and continue with the story.
At first I thought this was very strange, why would you want the player to skip your puzzles, but the game comes with a clever response that makes sense. The same goes for the explanation why these monoliths are here in the first place. I really enjoyed this clever writing and I found the implementation of these monoliths into the story very creative.
Reviewing this game is incredibly hard, I simply don't want to tell you to much about it, because you have to find out for yourself. The gameplay is for sure second to the story, so keep that in mind.
I know there are a lot of people that absolutely hated the ending, but I'm not one of them. It's a controversial ending without a doubt, but it's also mainly the reason why this game is still on my mind after finishing it. The ending made this game so much more memorable than it already was and I appreciated the courage for writing such an ending.
It's a pretty short game, like finishing it will take you under 3 hours probably, but the whole presenation like the beautiful art style, the soundtrack and the sound effects elevate the gameplay and the story even more.
So in general Evan's Remains is a short, but very memorable game with some cool creative platforming here and there, but most importantly, it's a game with a very mysterious and creative story that leaves an impression on you. Maybe you won't appreciate the ending at all and maybe it will kinda make you hate this game, but I'm okay with that. I like it when games are trying to be different and divide their audience because of the developer's decisions or vision. I would rather have an ending that will stay with you for a while than an ending that just makes it sweet, but generic.
So be ready to unravel the mystery of this island and find out what happened to Evan, so you will experience an intriguing story you won't forget soon!
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Gaming with Joy
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