Ever Forward is the new puzzler from the makers of My Time At Portia, Pathea Games. It has a neat clean look, and what looks to be an intriguing story from the point of view of 12-year-old Maya. And it has a free demo out now on Steam.
Having gone through (almost) all of the demo content, I can say that the game has its heart in the right place, but the puzzles themselves need some more time in the oven.
Quarantine Life
In Ever Forward, Maya travels between an idyllic beach and then transitions into the grey cubic world where she has to solve puzzles. With each puzzle solved, you get to see snippets of Maya interacting with her always busy mother.
Without saying too much, it feels like the story sounds eerily close to home, given that a global pandemic is affecting most of us right now. Is it intentional, or just mere coincidence and I’m reading too much in it?
Suffice to say, the story beat sounds intriguing. Also, the demo has the voiceovers done in Chinese with subtitles, which is interesting to see the developers embracing their roots.
Puzzle Blocks
The core of Ever Forward is puzzle solving. When in the cubic world, you have the choice explore and fly around- but there’s nothing to explore in the demo, and so far there will be only one puzzle active at a time.
The puzzles start off simple at first, bring the block to the other point. It’s straightforward and should ease you into the game. But there’s also an element of stealth where you have to avoid drones, or manipulate their field of vision by throwing blocks at other areas.
The block puzzles, when it just involves you throwing blocks or juggling multiple blocks to open switches, are brain-tingling engaging. But when the drones come in play it’s a lot of trial-and-error. Expect to see yourself flinging blocks over and over before you can figure out how exactly these drones will turn to look at them. There will be many times where you expect them to look the other way, but they turn around to you, which restarts you to the previous checkpoint.
On that point, at least the cool thing about Ever Forward is the ability to put down your own checkpoints. Perfect for solving puzzles that require a lot of setup, it’s a boon of a timesaver. A great feature to have in puzzlers with fail states.
The current issue I have with Ever Forward’s puzzles is that, from what I have experienced, it doesn’t live up to the claim that there are multiple solutions available for each puzzle.
Some require very specific solutions, which involves a very tight window timing. And the most frustrating ones are the ones with the drones. Their cone of vision goes way further than you expect- puzzles where they are out in the open are just frustrating.
I can’t for the life of me figure out how to solve the puzzle with the two drones facing each other. If there’s a mechanic I’m missing or a concept I didn’t get than the game needs to reduce the difficulty curve of the puzzles, or open them up for multiple solutions to be available. Or have them ordered so they play on the same mechanics from the previous one, but with a twist.
Add that to the very specific requirement you need to have them turn exactly the right direction as mentioned earlier, and Maya having reduced movement speed once a drone is ticked off by this, makes puzzles with drones excruciatingly difficult and frustrating. I gave up on the last two puzzles for the demo.
Closing Thoughts
Ever Forward has potential. The setting, aesthetic and story setup have a certain charm and appeal to it. And from the response on of the Ever Forward Prologue demo on Steam, it’s mostly positive so far.
The puzzles still doesn’t feel as good- the early ones makes you feel like the smartest person in the world (which is good!) only to have the later ones making you brute force something because it feels like the solution is probably something obscure.
Pathea Games are still tweaking the puzzles even in this demo based on player feedback, so there’s still time and hope that the core game element will continue to be refined before the full release.
Ever Forward will launch on PC (Steam) this summer, and will be coming to PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch later this winter.