Having seen the trailers, the graphics are probably what surprised me the most. When I first saw the trailer, the game looked a little underwhelming. Did that change?

Evertales (Universal: $0.99) 

“This is a tale of unlikely Heroes. Embark on journeys of not-so-epic proportions with Sir Jorgin, the noble knight past his prime; Arwick, the ladies man and elf rogue; and Taragon, wize, old, and somewhat senile wizard. Welcome….to Evertales.”

Presentation

And while I wouldn’t consider the graphics groundbreaking, they do a good job. Although the game is fully 3D, it feels more like a 2.5D side scrolling puzzle. While you play the game though you’ll notice things that stand out in the background, which makes it a nice addition (which you wouldn’t have with a 2D background).

You can even go ahead and change your characters design with upgrades you can buy, using the golden coins you find in the levels. My personal favorite is the game’s narrator, which breathes new life into the game.

Controls

The control is where it starts going bad. Movement is controlled by a virtual stick on the left, but jumping and attacking are handled by swipes. This does not behave well. Luckily, digging through the options you can set the jumping and attacking to be handled by two traditional buttons, which combined with the virtual stick give the game decent controls.

Gameplay

It’s very simple to think of Trine when you’re playing Evertales. I mean, it has a similar story, and three different heroes with abilities. You have archer, who can shoot arrows and doublejump, a mage who casts spells and floats slowly to the ground, and a warrior who can get extra weapons through upgrades.

Although you can switch between the characters, unlike Trine though, you won’t really have any reason to switch. To make things further worse, the game isn’t very long, you can probably play through most of it in a couple hours, since there are only twelve levels.

Perhaps the worst thing is the poor checkpoint system, which only gets worse when you realize nothing happens to you once you die, you simply respawn. I can see where the game is trying to go, but at it’s current state, I’m unimpressed.

Conclusion

This may just be the first bad Crescent Moon Games game I play. Although I see where the developers tried going with the game, the execution sadly failed, which is sad because this had the potential to be a lot of fun. Even though the game is $0.99, I’d still recommend waiting a bit for an update to at least address some basic stuff. Sorry folks.