Everhood (Retro Weirdo Boss Battle RPG)
Everhood is what happens when you bottle up an acid-trip run through Beatmania in a smoke-filled basement arcade and manufacture an NES cartridge out of the bottled essence. You take on the role of a one-armed doll engaging in dance battles with toads and ATMs that spit out little guitar hero buttons to dodge. Occasionally you’re confronted by a spiritual oneness that some Christians might confuse with God who first appears to you in an explosively bright white and asks you to press a button and to “abandon your idea of time and accept immortality.” Although the developers call Everhood an “unconventional adventure RPG,” there isn’t much RPG to it. There is no levelling, no grind. Not a single random battle. Every fight is a boss fight, but some are shorter than others. You wander the infinite blackness (no, really, everything aside from the neon outlines of houses and objects is pitch dark) looking for answers to questions that you don’t remember asking. And that, in a nutshell, is Everhood.
The battles themselves are so difficult that the first fight you might find yourself chuckling under your breath as the game itself taunts you, giving the same annoying tips over and over. “Moving sideways is faster than jumping” it tells you, as you mutter “fuck off” under your breath in contempt. This difficulty just adds to the absurd, oppressive atmosphere. Everhood is its own psychedelic musical genre but the question of whether or not it’s worth the money is a tough one, but if your eyes lit up as you read the words “NES,” “Acid Trip,” and “Beatmania” together, then this could your thing. But if you’re allergic to pixel art or Beatmania or the scent of a creepy smoke filled basement arcade then Everhood unfortunately is not your game. Some games are easy to explain, rateable even. Nothing about Everhood is easy.
Written by Callous MacKrazy
Everhood
Chris Nordgren, Jordi Roca (developers), Foreign Gnomes, Surefire.Games (publishers)
3.141 (lol) / 5
