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Everreach: Project Eden

Unforgiving indie third-person sci-fi shooter, with some nice background scenery.

By Three of Seven Thu 23 Jan, 2020 4:41 PM
Having given Everreach: Project Eden a go, and playing through it a little, I can now give my thoughts on the game. You can watch my first look over on YouTube if you want to see how I jumped into the game, and to get a view of what the game looks like.

Name:  HoverBikePre.jpg
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Size:  44.6 KBFrom the outset, it looks like the game has certainly been designed with consoles in mind over PCs, the is evidenced from the menu screen, and the options menu. While the menu is polished, and well designed, the options are somewhat lacking, there is no setting for the subtitles to turn them on/off, for example, and graphic settings cannot be changed once you are playing the game. It is often helpful to change graphics during the game, because you get a better feeling of what options you might want on, or off.

One of the biggest omissions from the game for me is the ability to save on demand, the game uses checkpoints, which from a roleplay style of game, where you get skills, and items, really causes issues. The image on the right is from an early stage in the game, where you first get to use the hoverbike, and you have to avoid being hit, as well as rocks. If you run out of health, off you go back to the checkpoint, which can be quite far back, because the individual objective points don't give a checkpoint, muscle memory will take over, and guide you eventually.

It has been a long time since I have played a game that was unforgiving with checkpoints like this one, on one hand, that's good, it means it doesn't want to hold your hand too much through the game, on the other, it can get frustrating. For example, at one point, I had gotten through two sets of enemies, leveled up, and got some loot, then died to some enemies who were in cover. This sent me way back to the previous checkpoint, before the two sets of enemies. If a level up triggered a checkpoint as well, it wouldn't be so bad, but it was further back than my level up. On the plus side, I kept my level, and skills, so it wasn't all bad, just a lot of walking to do.

Name:  SkillThreePre.jpg
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Size:  50.0 KBThe game does also have an option called "easy mode", and the standard mode, so you can have more of a story experience if you wish. There are also options to assist with aiming, which could be beneficial, as shooting in this game is not a fun experience, it doesn't feel like shots have much impact to them, and the crosshair is not all that helpful, I couldn't find an option to change that either. Having the ammo count over the gun is fine, it looks quite nice, but the shooting itself, can probably be best described as a Nerf gun fight.

Shooting does also seem to be one of the main parts of this, so you'll have to get used to it. There are other elements of course, of the roleplay variety, such as what you see on the left, this is the upgrade tree. You can collect components, which are needed to for upgrading, these are often found in crates, and if you use the map in the top right, you will see there are deadends, these will often have a crate to go open. Looking around never hurts, and this games level design seems to point you in the direction of places to look.

Graphically, the backgrounds look amazing, but the character design is something that looks a bit dated, this is possibly the result of a small development team. There are certainly some graphical things that can be fixed, such as swaying in cutscenes, I'm not sure if it's intended, but having the camera sway in conversational cutscenes can be quite distracting. That is pretty much all I can think to say about the graphics, for a small team, it's solid work, I do hope that they get some time to work on some elements and patch them in.

As far as the story goes, I haven't had a chance to fully complete the game, I have only played a small bit of it, so I can't say much about the full story. From what I have played, it does seem like the standard story of being the hero who is sent in, and solving the problems. How much decision making has to do with anything, I also don't know yet, I have seen some dialog options across the game, but none yet that really stand out as a big decision I have to make, I will no doubt find out more, as I play more.

Overall, what can I say about the game? Taking into account the size of the team, which was originally reported to be a five person strong team, with help from external contributors, I would say it's a good achievement. Is it fun to play? Aside from some of the mechanics, there are certainly parts which are fun, there are some interesting characters, and some amusing dialog, that said, I still find myself pressing the spacebar to jump, which isn't a thing in this game.

Does the game interest you? You can find it on Steam here if you want to check it out further.

WRITTEN & EDITED BY Three of Seven - rena.hobden@ufplanets.com
2 Comments
Thu 23 Jan, 2020 11:28 PM
It looks like an interesting game, the lack of saving on demand puts me off the game somewhat. Maybe future patches will help alleviate those issues.
Fri 24 Jan, 2020 1:02 AM
That's a really good read there Three