What if Fairy Tales weren’t just stories? What if those books on your shelf held worlds of their own? And what if you could go into any of them? What, then, would you do?
Been able to travel into your favourite world, or to draw things that come to life, is a fantasy that most of us have had at one point in our lives. The chance to live a spectacular adventure worthy of legend is a common dream.
Now imagine if you’re a storybook character and you’ve just found out that your whole world is contained in-between the pages of a book. And imagine that you’ve just found out your world isn’t yours anymore and that the age of adventurers and heroes is obsolete. You’ve been fired son, and what your world needs right now is another glorified desk jockey! What, then, would you do?
Story
This is the problem facing hero adventurer extraordinaire, Flynt. Just as he’s on his way to fight his nemesis, the terrible dragon Tinder, he’s chucked into a dungeon cell along with his most hated enemy and told that the world now belongs to Ever After Inc., a corporation from the real world that has taken over all the storybooks and is using them to expand their reach and profits in the name of all-mighty capitalism. So it’s either take a job at the new corporation or back to the dungeon you go. . .
Welcome to the world of Escape From Ever After, an epic, Paper Mario inspired RPG that will take you through the wonderful worlds of recognisable Fairy Tales galore, right through to the bowels of corporate hell and soul sucking call-centres. Just remember to wash your hands before leaving the restroom, m’kay?
Humour and Writing
In case you missed the tone, Escape From Ever After is a humourous, subversive take on corporate culture and Fairy Tales in general. It’s a bit like Monty Python with a heaping dose of sarcasm and the occasional slapstick moment. The humour is at the forefront of Escape From Ever After and, thankfully, just about all of it lands.
It’s dry, sarcastic, dark and weirdly wondrous. From Flynt teaming up with Tinder, now a pint-sized version of her former self, to the Three Little Pigs running a construction mafia, to the wonderfully weird take on Lovecraft’s Shadow Over Innsmouth that ends equally weird between Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu, a clear amount of love has been put into Escape From Ever Afters writing.
The characters and situations shine, usually rolling out something dark with a mischievous chuckle. And this is Escape From Ever Afters greatest strength: it instills in you the desire to keep playing just to see what weird and wondrous situation you’re going to fall into next.
Gameplay
As popular and beloved as the Paper Mario games are, few have attempted to replicate their charming gameplay and visual aesthetic. Escape From Ever After is now one of those few, even if it’s gameplay doesn’t quite reach the inventive heights of Nintendo’s series. That doesn’t mean Escape From Ever After isn’t fun to play though. Because it is. It takes familiar gameplay mechanics and, while not reinventing them, continues to keep them fun throughout the adventure.
You’re looking at 2D paper cutout characters exploring a 3D world from a fixed perspective, while speaking to characters, doing sidequests and performing plenty of platforming and light environmental puzzle solving across the world. Your crew is composed of a bunch of eccentric characters, whose abilities play as big a part outside of battle as they do within.
Characters and Abilities
Tinder can be used to set fire to objects like explosive drums while Flynt is the Captain America of the storybook world with his Buckler and the Big Bad Wolf, an aspiring musician, controls the elements through song. You’ll be setting lamps on fire to control platforms while getting changed into other forms to reach hard to reach areas.
It’s par for the course, but engagingly fun nonetheless. Exploring the environment yields special gems that can be used to buy yourself new attacks or trinkets with various stat enhancements while money can be used to buy Flynt a new wardrobe. You’re not going to climb the corporate ladder sporting sweats after all!
Combat and Progression
Trinkets have various stat benefits, such as using a group heal without spending points to do so, but you can only equip so many trinkets to a character. Finally you can find or buy Ink Bottles that can be used to upgrade your attacks with.
Battles are fun, if somewhat low stakes affairs. Enemy health tends to stay in the double digit numbers. There’s no power-leveling here either as there’s a set number of encounters per area and you’re going to be at just the right level the story needs of you.
As is becoming more popular, the mechanics require you to pay attention in battle, hitting button presses to deal higher attack damage just as your weapons connect, or defending just as enemies attack to negate damage. Paying attention to enemy states, such as how a soldier is holding a spear, for instance, makes the difference between dealing damage or taking it, while some multi-phase boss fights require you to play a tightrope game of managing your teams health and damage output while paying attention to mechanics such as taking down shields before you can do damage.
Pacing
If Escape From Ever After has any issues, it’s that it could have done with a little trimming as there can be a little too much back and forth between areas, not counting that you can go back to early areas later when you have new abilities at your disposal. The twenty or so hours it takes to reach the stories end, could have had it’s curtains brought down sooner. It doesn’t make it any less of a wondrous adventure, but there’s a lot to be said for nailing your runtime.
Conclusion
Escape From Ever After takes great pleasure in subverting Fairy Tale expectations while skewering corporate culture and blind capitalism. And it does so with some wonderful characters and even more wonderful writing that manages to tug on the heartstrings while eliciting a chuckle. The fun gameplay rounds out a wonderful RPG experience that will make you wish you could jump into your favourite books world all the more.
Escape From Ever After Switch Trailer
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The game was provided to us for the express purpose of reviewing.
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