You play as an armless sheepthing named Sheepo, and you are tasked on your first day of work to save the species on the planet Cebron. I loved the peaceful, conservation narrative of this game. A welcomed change when we are saturated with games that force you to use violence to progress. I am in no way a big fan of platforming, but the platforming is very smooth, and I never felt frustrated with the game and enjoyed the exploration. To explore certain areas, you gain abilities from collecting eggs, gated by the area boss. This will allow you to transform for a short period of time into the creature when you are near them, and use that ability to access new locations . Some sections and bosses offered up a good challenge (only played on hard difficulty), and required multiple attempts. The currency of Cebron is feathers, mostly situated in harder to reach areas and secret areas, and are used for buying key items. If you collect some new feathers after a savepoint, and die before saving again you will lose those collected feathers, and will have go back and collect them again. The NPCs are eccentric and lovable, with bits of humour sprinkled throughout. The art direction was done well, as with the sound design. The starting song is really nice, with some other tracks being leftfield and memorable. The game had a good-length of gameplay for the mechanics, it took me about five and a half hours at 94% completion with all the health upgrades on the hard difficulty, but definitely could be completed much quicker if you dawdle less . A neat speedrun mode is also included, which includes a timer and effectively skips cutscenes. Also, there was linux support noted in the credits, yet there is no linux version available that I'm aware of at the time of writing this. Although the game worked fine with lutris/wine. Overall, this game with its novel pacifist approach, lovable characters, smooth platforming, is an enjoyable 3-10 hrs of your time. Very comfy.
The game play is fast. You're nimble and have a great variety of weapons at hand. The weapons never feel redundant, and are really creative, even if they are similar in function when compared to the original Doom games. I was constantly switching back and forth with every weapon to dispatch the attacking hordes. Collecting enough enemy's souls allows one to access a secondary function of each weapon that enables you to kill more monsters in some really creative ways. e.g. pulling stars from the cosmos, shrinking them and launching them at enemies, or with the AMID EVIL "BFG" weapon, you summon a black hole which then can suck monsters into it. The artistic style of the game is fantastic. Classic looking, but yet modern, it has a vibrancy and art style like no other game I've come across. Meshes fantasy with astronomical motifs wonderfully and has interesting lore (make sure you read the codex!) Most of the maps are well done, play-ability wise, with secrets spread out to increase the replay-ability. The monsters and bosses are also well done, a huge variety each having a different style according to the world you're playing in. For example, the world which has cosmic mages, experimenting with the Universe, there is a flying enemy called the "Order of the Eclipse" which summons Solar Eclipse fireballs and launches it at you. The charge time is actually the transit time of the moon, until it reaches the total eclipse stage at full charge, then attacks. Lastly, I mention the sounds. The tracks are excellent, and all the sound effects are nicely done. From the level tracks to the "Welcome back champion!" after finishing each episode, its all such a joy to listen to. All these things any many more make AMID EVIL an all round new beast of the old, and I haven't had this much fun with a game in a long time.
