Evercade has had a great launch with strong early impressions, and by all accounts is a success with a long life ahead of it. But the competition is increasing in the retro field, with Spectrum Next, Intellivision Amico, Sega mini-consoles and endless Chinese handheld Android gizmos all demanding our attention.
While the big names from console and arcade history are likely all signed up for 2021 and beyond, Evercade is playing to its niche strength with a set of indies for retro consoles in its Indie Heroes 1 collection (cart no. 17) from a global roster of solo/homebrew coders.
Managing expectations is key here and while some of us might have been expecting a indie-fest-best-of, this feels like an oblique line-up of shooter, platform, puzzle and RPG oddities. There's some fun here certainly, and they've generated plenty of love among the retro community, but is this what Evercade players want? The full roster is:
- Flea, Lowtek Games
- Doodle World, Nate Peters (NES)
- Anguna, Bite The Chilli Productions (GBA)
- Super Homebrew War, Bite The Chilli Productions (NES)
- Foxyland, PSCD Games (Mega Drive)
- Alien Cat 2, PSCD Games (Mega Drive)
- Debtor, PSCD Games (Mega Drive)
- Ploid, Nape Games (NES)
- Uschuen, Nape Games (NES)
- Chain Break, 1985 Alternativo (Game Boy)
- Kubo, SJ Games (NES)
- Deadeus, Izma (Game Boy)
- Quest Arrest, John Roo (Game Boy)
- Twin Dragons, Broke Studio (NES)
The Cart page is now live with more screens/game info.
I recognise just a couple of names, and none of the games from a quick whizz around YouTube strike me with "must-play" wow-ness, fun - yes. So, here's hoping the Evercade team know what they are courting smaller developers with ambition to deliver more refined titles in the future. And that owners trust them and don't start skipping these carts as they struggle to find the value in them.
Also, don't forget that larger indies like the Xeno Crisis/Tanglewood pack are on the way, probably to be followed by many more, to balance out the quality/big name scales.
To get a sense of the developers, there's a great blog post with some of their stories to enjoy, but do their game design skills match their ambition? For Evercade, this is likely a low-risk play, winning over coders and hopefully generating the kind of love that Vita owners felt for the indies that came to Sony's portable.
In an interesting twist, Spanish firm Nape Games will produce their own version of the collection with a unique cover. They have a bunch of other NES games out or on the way including Reknum, Ploid X and Reknum 2 currently on Kickstarter, so this could be the start of a useful alliance.