Evergrow Chapter 1 Demo

Maze games are designed to put your spatial awareness to the test and keep your mind busy for a while, which is exactly what puzzle games should do anyway. However, the mechanics usually get boring in a rush, mainly because it’s difficult to stay excited when you are doing the same thing over and over again. Variety helps, but not every game nails the concept as well as it should.

Evergrow Chapter 1 is a simple puzzle game in which you have to travel over all the empty cells on the map in order to plant seeds and grow an entire forest. The tough part is that you can only go through each cell once, so you really have to plan your moves ahead in order to avoid getting stuck along the way. Thankfully, there’s a handy reset button that allows you to quickly try again.

The other thing you must take into consideration is that your character keeps going until it reaches a wall once you pick a direction. There’s no way to stop along the way, so every move is final, making it difficult to improvise along the way. This is part of the game’s charm, on the other hand, since it’s a lot more rewarding to finish a level when there’s so much thinking involved in the process.

Unfortunately, the gimmick gets old after a while, mainly because no new mechanics make an appearance along the way. You are practically doing the same thing over and over again, with slight variations when it comes to the mazes. It would be nice if more obstacles blocked your path later on, because simply find the correct solution gets boring in a matter of minutes, especially if you are a veteran of the genre.

Thankfully, the game has a solid base in regards to graphics and interface, because it would be easy to add new features and more levels. In fact, this is barely the first episode anyway, so a lot more is soon to come if the developers keep at it. Speaking of which, the graphics are very calming and enjoyable, even if the stages get repetitive after a while.

When it’s all said and done, Evergrow Chapter 1 is not quite there yet, but it has the potential to get a lot better in the future. However, it needs more content and a lot more variety for that to happen, so we can only hope that the developers deliver.