Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity

Imagine Super Mario Odyssey made by a philosophy major who got addicted to psychedelics. That's this game. Of course, that's an extremely reductive appraisal, but it will give you some idea of things. This game is constantly bizarre from start to finish, but thoroughly engrossing. It has eye-bleedingly intense visuals at times, and the level design is frequently strange and eccentric. The forms you unlock to traverse the levels with are extremely varied, and though some were definitely more useful than others, I was able to find a use case for most of them, and there were several that got used regularly. Each "world" has its own philosophical and aesthetic theme, and despite the cohesive visual style of the game they still manage to feel distinct. The game also pulls some interesting tricks sometimes, and I'm occasionally left wondering if I solved a particular level or item collection puzzle in an unintended way. I don't think that's a bad thing, but some forms felt quite overpowered or cheesy. I don't think the quality of the game's design is the most consistent, as some levels are dead easy and others can be quite challenging, and they also vary in size quite a lot, but the extremely unusual design ethos makes it constantly engaging in a way most games aren't. That alone elevates the experience, even if the level design is a little spotty, the difficulty curve gets much easier after you have certain forms, and the philosophical elements are incredibly obtuse. The unique visuals, philosophical bent, perfectly meshing soundtrack, and overall just fun gameplay with a wealth of levels to dig into makes this pretty easy to recommend, at least so long as you enjoy weird stuff. Frankly, I think it's a bit of a crime that this game hasn't garnered more attention, since it's definitely an indie gem. I've not played anything quite like it before, and I mean that as a compliment.

So, uh, there's a few things to unravel here: EXTREME EVOLUTION looks great just as much as it's headache inducing. It's a work of art (sorta), it's an attempt at making a somewhat bare-bones marble game into something more meaningful. The design (an absolute mish-mash of colors constantly visually warping inside solid forms) is making the game extremely confusing. There is an option to modify the visuals and make it all much clearer, and that's when you start to feel that you're just exploring somebody's game engine "gyms", basically, attempts at making stuff work with the objects they've created and given physics for the players to control. It's all very basic experiments. It feels like we're learning about his game at the same time as he is. It's as close as to "stream of consciousness game creating" could get. So the question is, if I remove all the cool-but-headache-inducing visuals, is the game any good? Is there any fun or even rewarding feeling to be had here? Sorta, yeah, but also, not really. It's a somewhat bare-bones marble game. It's got a few things in there to mix things up, different shapes/objects that work differently. Make the objects go places. Collect things that will give you enough "power" to transform into more different objects that will be able to take you to other places. Sometimes the game will give you a useless object, like a cone that rolls really awkwardly and that is absolute garbo to attempt to control. Sometimes it will give you an object that ALMOST feels useful, like the car that rolls fast into a straight line, but almost no section of the maps were designed for this car to run on, it's just very difficult to control and will mostly generate frustration, but also some laughter. Something else to note here is that the U.I. is absolute trash. I'm sorry Sam if that was your best attempt, but let's be real here, it's a damn mess. Some things will just appear off screen, it's EXTREMELY hard to understand, and most of it looks like it was made on Macromedia Flash 25 years ago. It's yet again, another headache. While playing, my head bounces around the thoughts that Sam might be pranking me into thinking there may be something deeper here, but at other times, I stumble on something and go "oh! well, that's interesting". Then again, look at me, I'm 400-something words into writing about all of this. So, who wins here? Sam. Mr. Sam Atlas won my 22.79$ CAD. So is EXTREME EVOLUTION worth 22.79$ CAD? Absolutely f**king not. Buy it on extreme discount, buy it if it's a dollar or two and take the money you've saved from that discount and call "the guy" to get a small ziploc delivered of whatever makes you enjoy colors a lot, and enjoy this for as long as you can enjoy it. My total enjoying time was 67 minutes. I'm still leaving this a thumbs up because there's a car named "cor".

guy who misheard "expressive platformer" as "expressionist platformer"

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Egg

Bizarre in the best way. Initially this seems very confusing, but eventually you will feel good exploring all the different worlds and falling into different mazelike realities. It's very puzzle like but the answers are up to you. If you like marble based games, this is a must play.

Super Monkey Ball was this guy's Velvet Underground

one of my favorite things ive played a while. the best way i can describe it is that its a combination of super mario odyssey and super monkey ball that also took a ♥♥♥♥ ton of dmt. excellent collectathon platformer with a ton of super cool and unique ideas, with about a million ways to solve each situation, all of which are both correct and incorrect at the same time