Evan's Remains (2020)

I played this game after reading a glowing review that praised how it used game elements and story to talk about games themselves. It turns out that it's... fine.

The puzzles are fun enough, but the story is.. firstly, there's just too much of it. Too much dialogue and slow animations that stop any sense of momentum in their tracks. It's also not very compelling and not very well written and there are some big plot twists that come out of nowhere and make no sense.

On the interesting side, I noticed on Steam that one of the achievements was called "Boquita papá!" and the description was "Drink mate using the termo of el más grande", which lead me to realised that the developer is Argentinian. Now I wish I had played it in Spanish, which I guess is the original language. Perhaps the dialogue wouldve been much better.

Evan's Remains is a short (2-3 hours) mystery puzzle game.

The puzzles are fun to solve and not too hard (even though you can skip them if you want) but not too easy, a sweet spot of making you think a little without frustrating you because you just want to see what happens next.

The story is a classic thriller: vague beginning to a story, red herrings, more questions than answers until the end and of course, plot twists. Maybe too many plot twists and a story a bit too convoluted, but interesting regardless. Definitely keeps you on the edge of your seat. One criticism, though, some dialogues are so unnatural and forced it almost took me out of the experience. I mean:

"hey do you know this guy?"

"yes he is the definition of humility, a god among us and the best person I know. Why?"

ok it wasn't exactly like that but it was pretty close. I mean WHO talks like that? There were other similar dialogues but overall it was fine.

The art in this game is gorgeous and the soundtrack is pretty good. It also looks like it was mostly made by one person (latin american too and it feels good to support my compañeros).