Evoland is a role-playing video game. It is the debut project by French development company Shiro Games.

Plot and setting

The game is centered on the theme of action-adventure video games evolution. It takes place in the world of Evolandia and follows a typical story of a chosen one and his fight against evil forces. The game’s dialogues, items descriptions, and overall style are filled with humor, parody, and references to iconic video game series.

Gameplay

The main feature of the game is unlocking of graphical, sound and gameplay improvements. The game starts as a monochrome top-down adventure with no sound and gradually, as the player progresses through the story, transforms into full-fledged 3D RPG with soundtrack, different settlements throughout the game world, side-quests, NPCs and equipment system.
Evoland’s gameplay continually changes. It can be divided into three main parts, each one resembling a certain game series. The first is top-down adventure similar to older The Legend of Zelda titles. Like Zelda, it features different puzzles and dungeons throughout the game. Then the game changes its combat system to turn-based imitating Final Fantasy series with its random encounters and party system. After that, it becomes the top-down hack-n-slash game in the style of Diablo series with the accent on obtaining various loot.

Games like Evoland