Evoland is an homage to the fantasy adventure games of the 80s and 90s. That's not just its style; it's the game's purpose. It imitates primary inspirations the Legend of Zelda and the Final Fantasy series and, in its central gimmick, Evoland changes the gameplay as you go to carry you through all those eras. Those updates are Evoland's main method of advancement and reward. While playing, the game upgrades you from 8-bit graphics to 16-bit, from grid-locked movement to free movement, and from 2D to isometric to 3D. Moving from area to area changes you from Zelda-style puzzle-and-slash to Final Fantasy-style JRPG.

The first (and so far, only) complete project by young developer Shiro Games, Evoland includes the puzzles and tools that you expect from a puzzle-slasher, the menu-based combat you expect from a JRPG, and the fetch quests and runaround NPC hunt you expect from both. The high point of the game is a series of puzzles solved by "traveling through time," shifting between 2D and 3D to navigate obstacles and unlock the way forward.

Originally built for and winner of LudumDare 24, you can still play the original offering (link seems to be down right now), and it is heartily entertaining.

Overall, the game is amusing, but it falls short of being a fully-realized game. An homage of this sort must also be a successful example of the genre, and while the creators clearly love the sources, they don't capture enough of what made those original games beautiful and fun. You could argue that they didn't have time to do so, focusing on the history and transition of the games instead, and you would probably be right.

But that leaves us here: Once the game stops providing frequent upgrades to the system, you see past the homage to how thin the game is beneath, and Evoland begins to feel like a journeyman project for the developer. It's a three-hour game that I'm satisfied to have bought for three dollars on sale, but I don't think I'd be as happy spending the ten dollars it's going for on Steam.