| rdfs:comment | - An action RPG modeled heavily from the SNES' surprise hit, Secret of Mana. Despite rumors to the contrary, Evermore is not the sequel to Secret of Mana, but was made from whole cloth by Square USA (now part of Square Enix), and is one of the company's few games to have been developed entirely in the United States. It also featured a highly atmospheric soundtrack from newcoming composer Jeremy Soule, who went on to provide soundtracks for such classic games as Dungeon Siege, The Elder Scrolls III and IV, Guild Wars and the Total Annihilation series.
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| abstract | - An action RPG modeled heavily from the SNES' surprise hit, Secret of Mana. Despite rumors to the contrary, Evermore is not the sequel to Secret of Mana, but was made from whole cloth by Square USA (now part of Square Enix), and is one of the company's few games to have been developed entirely in the United States. It also featured a highly atmospheric soundtrack from newcoming composer Jeremy Soule, who went on to provide soundtracks for such classic games as Dungeon Siege, The Elder Scrolls III and IV, Guild Wars and the Total Annihilation series. The game stars a B-movie-loving boy and his dog, who stumble upon an abandoned mansion in the middle of Podunk, USA. After a mishap with a mysterious-looking device, the boy and his canine companion get transported to Another Dimension, and find out that four other people have been trapped inside for decades, the disastrous result of the Evermore experiment 30 years ago. His goal becomes to explore this strange new world, learn the history of the Evermore project, and find a way to get everyone back to Earth. While the story isn't nearly as involved as it might sound, the game isn't without its highlights, the aforementioned soundtrack being one of them, the subversions of some path-of-least-resistance video game economic tropes being another. The game itself is rather short, compared to Secret of Mana and other Square-Enix titles; it's also extremely linear, with no side-quests and a straightforward 'defeat the villain' premise. Otherwise, Secret of Evermore is fairly entertaining, with the boy constantly comparing his predicament to various (fictional) movies, and the dog shape-shifting into different forms, depending on which part of the game-world they're in. Over the course of the game, you gradually learn more about the world of Evermore and its inhabitants; specifically, that Professor Ruffleburg designed Evermore as a realization of its inhabitant's 'ideal world', each area catering to their own personal desires. For one resident, Evermore is a prehistoric jungle, while for another it becomes an archaeological dig. Each 'environment' in Evermore seems to exist in its own biome; each is separated from the others in some way (Fire Eyes' village is on a massive plateau, some areas are only reachable by travelling through sewer pipes, and the final area of the game isn't part of Evermore at all). Likewise, each area has its own distinct life-forms, which are unique to the region and do not appear in other locales. A long-dead post in the 'Secret of Evermore' Game FAQs forum featured an extended (and very interesting) discussion with one of the game's programmers who happened to stumble upon the conversation -- topics covered before the thread 'died' ranged from what the programmers did after work, to an explanation of what the Gourd does (it doesn't do anything, incidentally), and even some personal anecdotes regarding the design process itself.
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