REVIEW : Evan’s Remains (PC)
Evan’s Remains is an indie puzzle-platformer with heavy stress on conversation and story-telling. The game has some fabulous mysteries and visuals, but the whole adventure is let down by a short runtime that doesn’t let the narrative breathe and gameplay/story separation that feels as if someone glued two totally different experiences together.
Evan’s Remains follows a girl called Dysis, who is sent to a secret island to find a missing genius called Evan. The island is meant to be abandoned, but Dysis quickly runs into strange monoliths that appear to have been made by some old civilization. It doesn’t take long for Dysis to run into other adventurers on the island, who think that it holds an ancient treasure.
A Puzzling Platformer
The gameplay loop of Evan’s Remains involves Dysis visiting each monolith and solving its puzzle, before moving on to the next story segment. The goal of each Monolith is to leap over the gate on the right side of the screen. Unfortunately for Dysis, each platform disappears after it has been landed on once, so the player will have to plan their route discreetly through the stage. As the game proceeds, it adds new components to the stages, such as teleporting platforms, trampoline-style platforms that increase the height Dysis leaps depending on how high she fell from the previous platform, and switches that change the attributes of platforms. It’s here where Evan’s Remains excels, as the platforming sections are incredibly well-done and it never feels as if a puzzle is too hard or is frustrating to the point where the player will want to quit. A reset button that puts the player back at the start of the stage would have been helpful, instead of the reset switch that the player has to manually go to each time (and not all states have them).
The visuals of Evan’s Remains are gorgeous, with a world created in the style of old Japanese pixel-art games (with a bit of Maplestory‘s aesthetic thrown in). The soundtrack is equally lovely, with relaxing retro pixel tunes that can calm the player whenever they screw up a puzzle. Evan’s Remains is a pretty game with a fitting soundtrack, but these are just part of the whole experience, and it’s in the story-telling department that the game starts to falter.
The chief issue with Evan’s Remains is the separation between gameplay and story, which, unlike something like Celeste, feels forced. The characters lampshade the fact that the mysteries themselves are insignificant and Dysis is only doing them for fun. The platforming parts of the game feel like a separate entity and they don’t gel with a story that could easily have been told in visual novel form. Evan’s Remains is also a short game, clocking in at just a few hours, and it feels like it ends just as it’s starting to get interesting. Evan’s Remains is a budget title, so gamers shouldn’t be too dissuaded by the short length if money is an issue. It’s just that the story rushes to its conclusion without giving players the time to grow attached to its characters or learn about them. It’s for this reason that some of the story’s resolutions feel unsatisfying, especially as the initial premise of searching for a missing person on a (seemingly) abandoned island is so interesting.
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