Evoland

Evoland
http://evoland.shirogames.com/
Developer: Shiro Games
Available on: Windows, Mac, Linux, IOS, Android, PlayStation 4, Switch, Xbox One

In Evoland you play a Dragon Knight who adventures through the world to stop an evil creature. As you play this action rpg you unlock features and learn about the progression of the genre over the decades prior to the games release.

The game intends to teach the player in a loosely chronological order how action rpgs started and where they are today. It does this by giving the player features in chests hidden around the game. The first few features you unlock are the abilities to move around the environment in different directions and the features become more complex from there.

Evoland’s design enables it to be a good teaching tool and easy to learn almost everything necessary to play the game. Some necessary prior knowledge is general use of the platform the game is being ran on and the ability to read at a roughly third or fourth grade level.

The primary educational value of Evoland is that of teaching video game history. Many of these are not explained at length, but are experiential. You begin the game with the ability to move from one screen to another, but later the ability for the screen to scroll smoothly is unlocked. This demonstrates a progression from a map being what is displayed on screen to track and render only a portion of a larger map.

Outside of the historical value of the knowledge gained from playing the game it can be applied to breaking down systems in an action rpg. The game starts with simple movement, then progresses to multiple map screens, then it adds sound effects, interactions with the environment, hazards, a save system, npcs, etc. Each new system layered into the game builds on to the experience and changes how the world works. Other potential ways to transfer is looking at trends and predicting how progression will continue based on what innovations existed previously and how they improved gameplay experiences.

The game is constantly introducing new mechanics, but the core mechanics are introduced early. The player will move around the screen, interact with objects and hazards by colliding into them, and remove hazards by swinging a sword at them. Some additional mechanics are collecting objects by finding hidden chests, progressing the story by interacting with specific objects, and saving progress by running into a save point.

Evoland’s dynamics have the player exploring the map for objects to interact with and collect, fighting enemies by dodging attacks and returning blows when the enemy is vulnerable, and planning and saving before big fights or after significant progress.

Aesthetics for Evoland are primarily narrative, discovery, and fantasy. The narrative is a combination of a relatively generic fantasy story and the history of action adventure games. The fantasy is a world of medieval swords and sorcery. Discovery is the wonder of what secrets are off the beaten path and what new environments the progression path will take the player through.

Spatial contiguity is presented with the upgrades. When the player unlocks full movement the screen expand in all directions. When the games color is upgraded to 16 bit the player can see the effects. When the sound effects are unlocked they are immediately heard. Text explanations accompany the unlocks and their immediate visual effects.

The achievement principle is displayed with the progression of the game. Players are introduced to mechanics over time and as they develop their abilities with the mechanics they are able to overcome obstacles. As additional mechanics are added the player must learn how to integrate them into existing mechanics. As they integrate the new mechanics they are able to progress through challenges by learning to effectively use it.

The game also adjusts the time between learning portions of history and features based on the time it takes to process the previous mechanic with new ones. This pacing is adjusted in some by the player aptitude, requiring challenges to be overcome before progression can occur.

The aesthetic of discovery pushes the player to continue searching the environment and they are rewarded with improved play experiences, new features and knowledge. The effects of seeing the improvements as well as easily digested text blurbs explaining them also helps the player understand what a new feature is and how it is used to improve the experiences combining the spatial contiguity and narrative. Overall the learning objectives are coherent with the gameplay experience and pace, but some of the takeaways beyond history are probably lost on the majority of crowds.