Ever Forward is a promising and often challenging puzzle game and definitely one to keep an eye on if you’re a fan of the genre.
Type: Single-player
Genre: Puzzle, Adventure
Developer: Pathea Games
Publisher: Pathea Games
Release date: TBA
Intro
Ever Forward is a puzzle adventure game, and I was given the chance to play the demo version of the game for this preview. The game features some surprisingly challenging puzzles for you to solve whose solutions aren’t obvious in many cases. The demo features a total of 8 puzzles and it also has a bit of a story as well. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, do give this short preview a read.
Story
Ever Forward tells the story of a young girl who is continually neglected by her mother due to her work. It’s a rather sad tale that’s also told in the Chinese language, which was fairly surprising. The story is told through snippets of video after you solve each puzzle. It also feels like there will be a much greater story to tell in the full game because the snippets are from the girl’s childhood but in the game world she seems a bit older.
Puzzle Solving
The game is largely a puzzle based game and you’ll be solving 8 of them in the demo. The puzzles are relatively small, but they get pretty challenging later on. There were some that I figured out easily but others… I had quite a bit of trouble with. The second to the last puzzle gave me the most trouble. The one with the 3 gates also took me a while too.
The puzzles largely revolve around using power blocks to power up various systems in each puzzle. These systems can be good, or they can harm you and force a restart. You’ll also need to watch out for circle bots, which will instantly shoot you the moment they see you forcing a restart as well. The game does feature a save system where you can save anywhere in the puzzle and when you die you’ll respawn where you last saved. You can also reload from a previous save if you pause it, in case you saved in a bad position.
Verdict
Overall, Ever Forward has some of the most aggravating puzzles that I’ve encountered in some time, and I mean that in a good way because it means they’re well-designed to the point where they even stumped me for a time. This game will likely be more of a niche title but if you enjoy puzzle solving games then there’s a good chance you’ll enjoy this game quite a bit. I didn’t run into any bugs or glitches during my time with the game and it ran quite well. Definitely one to keep an eye on if you’re a fan of the genre.
