Eversion

Eversion
Developer:  Zaratustra
Category:  Platform Puzzler
Released:  Jun 2010
Usual Price:  £3.49
Hours Played:  2
Controller Compatible:  Yes
Rating:  0 Stars

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Eversion is a retro puzzle platformer with a very basic chiptune soundtrack that has you controlling an orange flower with feet. You shuffle around head-butting blocks and switching between two different versions of the same world.

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Menus, Progress & Stats 

The game is rendered in 1980s throwback style and begins with a start-screen that you navigate with arrow-keys. To the sound of jolly music this screen shows your usual pathways but the option screen is in plain black and white. On hitting "Play Game" you are taken to a similar screen showing a list of the worlds (or areas) in plain text that you have completed. You are shown the amount of gems you have collected in those areas plus the maximum possible gems you can get. Counter-intuitively, to activate menus, you hit B on the XBox controller rather than the usual A button.

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Gameplay

Gameplay is promising at first. Using the four usual directions and a jump button, you zip around with your little orange flower collecting gems and jumping on blocks and various platforms. Some blocks can be head-butted to reveal gems and there are round splodgy enemies that wander around and that can be despatched by jumping on their heads. You complete a level by arriving at a flag at the end. The main USP of Eversion is the fact that some areas allow you to invert the world so that objects you may have been able to walk through before become solid and vice-versa

As long as you can get to the area where an inversion is possible, you may switch back and forth between the worlds at your leisure. Later, the game takes a sinister twist when events like an evil black cloud chases you and demonic hands rise from the abyss to grab you - to an ear-piercing screech! All this is very well and good and I was looking forward to settling in to an enjoyable experience. Unfortunately, I hit a game-breaking moment where a jump is just plain not possible. Even with YouTube clips showing it being done easily, I simply fall into the drink or bump into a hand everytime I try to make the supposedly easy jump. Result? Premature game over - forever. Thank you and goodnight!    

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Conclusion
What do you do when you review a decent and enjoyable game but hit an insurmountable obstacle through no fault of your own? Why is it that in the panel above with the hands, the block that you fall from to get to the other side clearly has a chip in the corner of it when the blocks in the YouTube walkthroughs (that show a successful descent) do not have that chip? I have tried it at least 100 times so something is just plain obviously wrong. After a really promising first hour or two, I have no choice but to denounce this game as being a major disappointment.