HIGH Creative, thought-provoking worldbuilding that I will not soon forget. 

LOW A music-based game that forces players to dodge off beat still feels counter-intuitive. 

WTF Videogamedunkey is in this?? 

When I first started writing for GameCritics, one of the first titles I had the pleasure of reviewing was a strange looking title called Everhood. 

In my time with it, I was flabbergasted by Everhood’s commitment to storytelling, larger than life philosophical themes, and moral ambiguity — all of which have stuck with me. Four years later, when I saw Everhood was receiving a sequel, I jumped at the chance to see what else developers Jordi Roca and Chris Nordgren had up their sleeves. I’m happy to say, Everhood II takes all the successful elements of its predecessor, dials them up to eleven, and creates a superb experience that oozes with personality, comedy, and mystery. 

Everhood II takes its protagonist into a realm past death, riddled with danger and mind-bending realities. The player will befriend an enigmatic raven who encourages them to defeat an entity known as the Mind Dragon in order to escape this perilous dimension. Along the way, the player will travel across space and time, meet zany characters, and make critical decisions that will impact not just their story, but the entire cosmos. 

Though all of this sounds far-fetched, one of Everhood II’s greatest strengths is its cryptic, yet thought-provoking worldbuilding. Each of the realities the protagonist will visit feel lived-in, and are filled with memorable characters. From a battlefield decimated by the war between fruits and vegetables, to a digital circuit board riddled with viruses, exploring each setting without knowing who was truly friend or foe always kept me engaged.  

The main hook at the start is fighting against the initially-overpowered Mind Dragon, and upon the player’s defeat, traveling back to previously-visited worlds that will allow the protagonist to get stronger and more prepared for an inevitable rematch. However, each time a world is revisited, it changes drastically. Whether it’s the passage of 1000 years, or a town that once celebrated you as a hero but has now come to see you as the enemy, the choices made in-game will greatly affect the setting of the next environment, and perhaps the overall arc of the story itself, highly encouraging multiple playthroughs!  

Music-based combat as a concept remains mostly unchanged from the first Everhood. The player is on a five-note grid, and will have to dodge, absorb, and reflect incoming notes from their enemy. Though I found the musical tracks in the first installment to be mildly underwhelming, Everhood 2’s soundtrack is filled with psychedelic tunes that get the blood pumping with synth-based choruses when they’re not perfectly reflecting the personality of the opposing foe. 

However, the main issue I had with the first Everhood‘s battle system remains unchanged here in the sequel. Though the opponent is hurling notes in time with the music, it’s the player’s responsibility to dodge these notes when they arrive, and they’re usually off beat. There were times where I felt it was difficult to fully resonate with the music because I intuitively wanted to press buttons in time with the tunes, but succumbing to this urge would lead to my untimely death.  

Also, for an experience so entangled in its philosophical themes, music isn’t central to the plot, so it begs the question of why this combat system was picked in the first place. 

Apart from my modest frustrations with the combat system and a few too many time-shattering events to keep track of by the time I made it to the endgame, Everhood II is a triumphant follow-up to an already strong title. I will not soon forget the chaotic worlds visited, the eccentric friends made along the way, and the thought-provoking questions raised by my travels through the spirals of time. 

Rating: 8.5 out of 10 

Disclosures: This game is developed by Jordi Roca and Chris Nordgren and published by Foreign Gnomes. It is currently available on Switch and PC. Copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: This game was rated E+10 by the ESRB, and it contains Fantasy violence and mild blood. Themes of death, conflict, morality, and philosophy are intricately woven into the game’s core. I wouldn’t recommend the title to anyone younger than their early teens. 

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes, but there is an image sensitivity mode for those who might be sensitive to flashing lights or bright colors. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game is fully subtitled. Though the speed of the text can be changed, the size cannot. The game is music-based, and though one could get away with playing it without sound, that lack of audio input adds another level of difficulty to the combat.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.  

The post Everhood 2 Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Cute aesthetic. Intuitive, brain-soothing gameplay.

LOW Too chill for its own good.

WTF Some of the marketing is cringe-inducing.

The indie game scene is — and I don’t think this is a controversial thing to say — the healthiest, most interesting and fecund sector of the industry. With the major game studios intent on treading mechanical water and out-glossing one another, anybody craving texture, creativity, innovation, spark, or juice should turn to the individual artists and small collectives for the good stuff. Nearly everything I’ve truly loved from the last five years – at least – has been an indie release.

Indie devs are the freak specialists, the alchemists, the daring vivisectionists fusing together disparate elements with an experimental flamboyance that the big boys lost back in the PlayStation 2 era. The only problem, if we want to call it that, is that there is actually too much good stuff out there, an absolutely tidal glut of noteworthy indie releases. Unshackled from the need for console clearance, indie devs can put their titles online for a (relatively) low cost, potentially finding audience sectors that the megacorps, faceless and vaguely moronic in their glittering arcologies, just aren’t interested in servicing. Thus, the indie scene is an embarrassment of riches and it takes a bit for a title to stand out.

Certainly Darenn Keller, developer of Dawnfolk, managed to bring his game up to a humble yet meaningful level of visibility — mainly through some sorta cute, sorta heavy-handed marketing stuff including an ad on Tumblr (!?!) that playfully references a meme from Supernatural (!?!) and if I write any more about this I will instantly age 1000 years, turn into dust, and my remains will blow away on cosmic winds…

In Dawnfolk, players build and expand a city on a planet imperiled by some sort of supernatural darkness. They’re aided by Lueur, a cute little blossom of flame who looks like something Hayao Miyazaki would doodle on a napkin during a smoke break. Each map is a grid of square tiles, some lit, some dark. Leuer’s job is to light the dark tiles on the frontier, so that players can build structures on them. Every structure affects production in one of four areas – Light, Workforce, Food, and Materials. All four are necessary for a successful city, but players will prioritize some over others depending on their situation.

The central gimmick in Dawnfolk is that many interactions on these tiles entail completing a real-time activity. In order to clear a tile of trees, for example, players play a reflex-based, three-second long woodchopping minigame. I say “central gimmick” but that’s almost overselling it since these minigames are just an embellishment, a little riff that Dawnfolk plays before leaving to explore other elements with its chilled out, near-weightless touch.

Lightness is the operative word with Dawnfolk. It does not ask for epic play sessions. It is not Crusader Kings or Civilization, and any of its maps across its various modes (excluding Endless) can be completed in an hour or less. It took me 60 hours to finish my first playthrough of CKII. I don’t know if I’ve ever finished a game of Civ — has anyone? But I completed Dawnfolk’s entire Story Mode and sampled some of its Puzzle and Curious Expedition maps, in well under ten hours.

This is not a criticism, inherently, as the strategy/civ builder format needs more short stories. I like that a Dawnfolk city’s entire arc resolves in less time than it takes to watch a briskly-paced movie. I also like that each Story scenario adds a twist to the formula, whether it’s the presence of an orc culture on the map, a dragon who demands tribute, or zombie-infested swamps. My particular favorite was a scenario about hunting for treasure in an archipelago (mostly water) which forced creative layouts to maximize production across several little landmasses.

So short is good, being accommodating is good, simplifying is good, but at some point a game that smooths off every rough edge and element that could generate friction, loses mechanical texture. Dawnfolk is too relaxed.

I am not a brilliant strategist, but I didn’t lose a single map in the Dawnfolk campaign – I didn’t even come close. Not a single bead of sweat crossed my brow, not a scintilla of anxiety passed through my system at any point. Even the aforementioned twists on specific maps don’t crinkle the strategy in big ways. Ultimately, every city felt like every other city, with the same buildings more or less doing the same things. It seemed almost impossible to make a real mistake.

…And all of that is fine, in a vacuum. Dawnfolk is pleasant, but nothing here sets off fireworks. Nothing grabs a player by the ganglia and makes them think about Dawnfolk when they aren’t actively playing it. It’s all breadth and no depth, and there isn’t even enough breadth here to make a single strategy sandwich. Play just one map, and the majority of the overall experience has been revealed.

So, while there was not a single moment of Dawnfolk that was unpleasant, buggy, or painful, there are many indie strategy titles I would recommend before it. I despise that we have to look at the experience of art as a transaction (and it grosses me out to say this) but I want people to know that their money may be better spent elsewhere.

…But then again, it may not.

If Dawnfolk looks cool, give it a try. It is a pared down, chill experience sitting at the crossroads between idle game, puzzle game, and city builder. Going in expecting a full-fat example of any one of these is asking to be disappointed. Expecting it to fully explore the territory it stakes out for itself is also a mistake. But for those who can relax and reign in their expectations, there’s an honest joy to be had.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

— Ben Schwartz

Buy Dawnfolk: PC

Disclosures: This game is developed by Darenn Keller and published by Astra Logical. It is available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 7 hours of play were devoted to the game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. The game could fairly be described as “wholesome” with all characters and units (even typically unpleasant creatures like zombies) drawn in cute pixel art. There is combat and death is implied, but little violence is depicted on screen. During hunting minigames, players shoot arrows at animals who do fall over and die, but there is no blood. There is no foul language, no mature themes, and nothing that could typically be called “scary.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is no spoken dialogue in this game, everything is presented with text. The text cannot be resized, although there is an option for an “HD font” which looks a bit bigger. The most important cues are when a turn ticks over and production occurs for all buildings/tiles — there is a “clock sound” to indicate a new turn, but all tiles also have a visual production animation. That being said, they’re pretty low-key and easy to miss. There is also has a turn-based option so the real-time elements can be completely removed, and this is the mode I recommend in general.

Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable. Both keyboard+mouse and controller are supported. Controller is recommended.

The post Dawnfolk Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

High Sweet, simple, compelling storytelling.

Low Metagames sometimes break up the narrative flow. 

WTF WHY CAN’T I SOLVE THESE PUZZLES?!?

YOFUJII and Isolation Studio’s Goodbye World traces the origin of Kanii and Kumade’s friendship and chronicles their gamedev adventures including the good, the bad, and the not-so-bad.

Their unlikely partnership is forged after Kanii has an argument with another student about a videogame project design choice. Although the two immediately foster an interesting friendship, their inability to make ends meet as a gamedev twosome tests their relationship. 

The crux of Goodbye World, a narrative adventure game with visual novel elements, centers on Kanii’s struggle to stay true to her artistic vision and create a game that can draw the interest of developers while keeping her friendship with Kumade intact.

Goodbye World is split into twelve parts, each accompanied by one of Kanii’s deceptively complex meta-games. Each one is modeled as a pixelated side-scroller similar to the “real world” that Kanii and her sweet companion, Kumade, inhabit. These metagames also mirror the trials and tribulations the two face throughout Goodbye World’s duration, a detail that added a fair bit of nuance to the narrative.

That being said, the metagames are a bit tedious, and I dreaded completing them. The purpose of each is to locate a key in order to progress to the next level, but players can only access the key by breaking, creating, and dodging blocks to reach them. As the story continues on, the metagames become more difficult, and players must finish each metagame within three tries or risk failing. Players can restart each level if they’d like, but doing so will cost players one of their lives. Much to my delight, however, failing the metagames does not prevent game progression; life goes on, even when one fails.

The controls are remappable, but I nevertheless struggled. The amount of times I passed away is truly embarrassing – like, it’s bad. As time passed and I became more frustrated, I began yeeting myself into spikes and letting the killer frogs devour me to continue the story. These tough moments would momentarily sever my connection to Goodbye World’s narrative flow, but the heartfelt story nevertheless transcended my abysmal meta-game skills. 

Indeed, where Goodbye World really sings is the tale of the precarious relationship between Kumade and Kanii. Their intimate connection is heartening, and following their journey was my favorite part of the experience. The in-game dialogue is simple yet resonant, and Kanii has a struggle with mental health that is portrayed with care. I won’t spoil anything here, but Goodbye World’s ending is beautifully done, and I found myself feeling satisfied. 

All in all, I genuinely enjoyed Goodbye World’s narrative landscape. Although the metagames were a pain to get through, the poignant storytelling, charming characters and beautiful design more than made up for it. Kanii’s and Kumade’s connection was palpable, and it was a treat to spend time with them. 

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

– Taylor Pryor

Disclosures: This game is developed by YOFUJII and Isolation Studio and published by PM Studios, Flyhigh Works, and IndieArk. It is currently available on Switch, PS4/5, PC, XBO/X/S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS5. Approximately 3 hours of play were devoted to this game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Mild Fantasy Violence. The violence takes place in the metagames where players are expected to defeat non-intimidating baddies to progress through the story. There are some moments where Kanii is depicted struggling with her mental health, but nothing too graphic or traumatic.   

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Goodbye World offers subtitles, but they cannot be resized. Audio cues are not necessary for game progression. Therefore, the game is fully accessible. 

Remappable Controls: This game’s controls are remappable. The game does not contain a control map diagram, but it does have a button mapping diagram. Every command in the game can be remapped to any button on the PS5 controller.

The post Goodbye World Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.