The banner from last night's stream of the Indie PC game 'Eversion'

Released initially in 2008 Eversion like many indie games of it's era hung it's hat on a single concept. Success however is best measured by how effectively that one concept is built upon and thankfully Eversion does at least add dimension (no pun intended) to what it brings to the table.

The initial narration is, as pulled directly from the game's accompanying readme.txt file, "princess is kidnapped you must save princess". A bog-standard story for what is initially a bog-standard platformer. However with your character's ability to 'Evert' he's in he can visit slowly more and more corrupted layers of the world he's in. Eventually visiting worlds so dark and eldritchian that even darkness itself is alive and rightfully owns it's place there.

Thankfully though Eversion does not just rely on the visual concept of progressive 'evil-dark' aesthetics but rather each level of decay has it's own rules and effects on the environment. Clouds become thick and coarse enough to stand on or become obstacles while trees die and break down removing themselves from the hero's path but no longer being able to provide standing support. Rose bushes also wilt away becoming lifeless branches that also become deadly thorns while the encroaching rocks show their true selves as equally deadly but sometimes essential footholds.

As a straight up platformer these mechanics make it perfectly serviceable. However to get the best ending as an end to collecting all of the gems strewn about the stages these elements provide quite the challenge yet (rarely) ascends to being pointlessly mean about the necessity of player foresight to solve them.

It also bears mentioning that for the HD Steam release which I played through last night, the game's final section has been changed significantly from the initial free release as is much better for it. While the first version was simply a difficult to navigate environment that relied on randomly shifting layers for the player to get through, it has been replaced with a sort of Super Mario Bros. repeating fortress that absolutely requires planning and proper knowledge of the Eversion and layer specific mechanics while still demanding a deft hand at platforming and enemy avoidance (and usage).

Eversion is a bit on the short side, and unfortunately stops short as it reaches it's stride in using it's core mechanics. The question of if it's worth it's $5 asking price on Steam is entirely up to how rewarded you'll feel by solving what the game asks of you. But it's still available in it's free form (sans the upgraded visials), so you could possibly just purchase the full game after playing the free one if you feel it was indeed worth it's $5 price-tag.

Sake of Trivia though if the title screen and first level themes sound like they're a bit off brand, that would be because the initial versions of the game used music pulled straight from the obscure Famicom platformer Cocoron. This obviously had to be changed for it's release on Steam but the new tracks seem to have most all of the familiar beats if you know what to listen for.

Eversion and it's concepts are property of Zaratustra Productions
Can be downloaded for free here; http://zarat.us/tra/eversion/
Or purchase the HD Steam version here; http://store.steampowered.com/app/33680/