Evergate Reviews

Nice little game. Tricky platforming but with a nice twist : the time slow down makes it more precision and strategy than speed & reflex

Evergate is a handheld (Nintendo Switch)/console game that's also been put on Steam as a bit of an afterthought, as it's very much designed for the handheld/console gaming audience. It's a mediocre 2D retro platformer, one of many thousands of 2D retro platformers infesting Steam. This is probably one of the better ones, but there's no prizes for being the tallest midget. This one has you control some "soulflame" thing to do puzzle platforming to try get someone reincarnated or something... whatever. Is it fun? Nope. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. It's worth noting the game wasn't particularly popular and could be noted down as a failure, SteamDB shows there's only a peak of 20 players playing this concurrently, that only happened once, now basically nobody is playing it. No surprises there... your gaming rig is not a Nintendo Switch. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam? Evergate has the almost comically optimistic (if it wasn't so sad) price of $10 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $10 asking price for this game could get you games like "Europa Universalis IV", "Disco Elysium" or "Project Zomboid". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.

Liked: - Solid core mechanics - Lots of variety in mechanics and combination - Good learning curve of new mechanics and combinations - Fun optional challenges with meaningful rewards Disliked: - Story felt a bit light and simplistic - Powers didn't feel especially balanced