Secret of Evermore Retrospective

The editors over at CVG have been busy this weekend, with their latest feature being a retrospective of Squaresoft’s Secret of Evermore, the well-regarded sci-fi RPG that was released on the SNES back in 1995. I’m not too familiar with this one, but it certainly sounds like it has an interesting premise:

Game designers misunderstand exploration. They seem to think all we want from a game is bigger landmass – as if acres of empty, unrealised space can somehow satisfy the need we have to wander dangerous or uncharted territory.

Evermore’s world – that is, Evermore – is many times smaller than the vast, open tundra of something like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but it’s also much riper for exploration. That’s thanks to a stunning contribution from composer Jeremy Soule (who I’ll get to in a moment), and a series of environments more suited to the rigorous prodding and plundering of your average tomb-raiding adventurer.

Evermore is a world created from the imaginations of four castaways who have been stuck there since a “scientific explosion” (approximately 76% more awesome than a regular explosion) in the 1960s. Prehistoria is positively prehistoric, home to dinosaurs, giant bugs and primitive people.

Antiqua recalls ancient Greece, comprising a piratical coastline, an ancient Colosseum and a yawning desert linking the two. Gothica, meanwhile, is yer typical medieval kingdom ruled over by a mad, puppet-wielding queen, and Omnitopia is a space station located on the moon.