This indie rhythm game has a frog that spits fire beats

Have you ever played an RPG game? How about a rhythm game? Well, why not both at once? Everhood is a game where music and a great story combine to create a rhythmic RPG masterpiece. Chris Nordgren and Jordi Roca (aka the Foreign Gnomes) are the two geniuses behind this game.

DISCLAIMER: I played this game on expert, and it was the first rhythm game I played.

Gameplay

Everhood packs a runtime of about 10-20 hours per playthrough. (Yes. Playthrough.) The game has three routes, pacifist, evil, and a secret boss (only in New Game+, so you have to beat the game once to even access it). In pacifist, you pretty much end the game after a secret boss, by explicitly saying you don’t want to kill everyone at the right time to the right person. In the evil ending, of course, you kill everyone and everything. The secret ending? If you no-hit every boss, a cat named Samuel appears. Chat with him, and he takes you to his home and summons the cat god, where you must fight for your life. Though the gameplay is great, there are a few issues I have with this game. The game is single player. I enjoy games more when I can play with friends. Saving requires you to get to save points which appear after most boss fights. You can’t just leave a fight; you have to close the entire game to get out of a fight. But other than that, nothing is more satisfying in Everhood than no-hitting a boss. When you win a fight without getting hit, it feels amazing and you get an achievement. Chris and Jordi are adding a replay feature so no-hits will be less tedious.

Story

A wooden doll gets possessed and becomes sentient. This wooden doll must get his arm back, which was cruelly stolen by the golden pig, so you have to fight him and all of his lackeys.  You make some friends along the way, and have to help them  by doing little tasks. Then you go through these cool areas and pretty much everyone is your friend, which doesn’t make a ton of sense, right? I actually mean you have to fight them. Anyway, you finally meet Gold Pig and try to earn your arm back. Gold Pig’s fight is pretty cool, but it’s pretty difficult at that stage. I’d say he could be an endgame boss, maybe like the second secret boss—who will remain unnamed. The only problem I have with the story is the repetition of characters. I think you fight two of the characters 3-4 times each.

Soundtrack

On a scale from 1 to 10, this game gets an 11 from me in the soundtrack department; it is absolutely perfect, and every song matches every fight. Sure, some people might disagree, and I clearly like this game, but that’s fine. I’ll admit the soundtrack is a bit repetitive, but I liked it enough not to mind.

Bosses

So I was going to put this in gameplay, but hey—they’re pretty good and a majority of the gameplay. Sure, there were quests, stories, etc., but the thing I focused on the most were the bosses. Some of my favorites, in terms of enjoyability, were the After-Death Experience, Gnome, Brown Slim Mushroom, Quantum Battle, Flan and Muck, and Frog’s Wrath, as well as any Rasta Beast fight. I like the After-Death Experience because of the visuals and the simplicity of the fight. Gnome’s song was a bop, and when you fight the gnomes there’s always something going on. That might be the background changing, some gnomes slapping each other back and forth, and finally, the fight is genuinely difficult. Brown Slim Mushroom was the hardest pre-arm fight for me. Quantum Battle is a bullet hell, basically requiring you to actually dodge instead of doing a rhythmic “battle” against the boss. Flan and Muck are brothers that give you wood and both play some sort of guitar-like instrument, and they’re cute. Frog’s Wrath has great visuals, music, and a Frog. Rasta Beast is a gentleman and most of his music is really good. 

Price

Everhood is $10. I would be willing to drop $10-$15 on a game like this, so I think the price is great, and since it’s on Steam it will go on sale during different seasons.