Ever Oasis

my sibling in christ that is water. you are simping for water.

anyway. I just wanted to get that out of the way bc if I had to see that comment on the Ever Oasis wiki then you do too

So what the fuck is Ever Oasis?

A gem hidden in the sand

Have you ever liked a game so much it genuinely surprised you?

Sometimes when you pick up a new game to play, you go into it not expecting much, and you leave with a new favorite. Sometimes you do expect that you're in for something amazing, and it turns out even better than you'd hoped (like open world Zelda :D). Or maybe you thought you would like it, but then you put the time in and it just isn't for you. Our expectations don't always match reality.

And sometimes, when the stars align, a game will shoot into your life like a lightning bolt and sweep you off your feet.

It doesn't always happen immediately; it might take a while for a game's systems to click, or for the story to get really good. But when they do—and you'll know when they do—that's when you know you won't forget this one. You'll bear the memories you made playing it like a scar across your heart.

I really wish I could tell you why Ever Oasis makes me feel this way, but to properly explain it would basically require me to spoil the plot of the game. And to be honest, it's taken me so damn long to get off my ass and write this article that I'm not sure if my memory of the whole experience is fresh enough to get the idea across. But I will try anyway, because I remember, clear as day, how I felt as those credits were rolling, and I hope others will pick up the game and get to feel the same way too.

The last oasis

Ever Oasis is a half town-builder, half action RPG released for the 3DS in 2017. Published by Nintendo, developed by Grezzo (of Link's Awakening and Echoes of Wisdom fame), and directed by Mana series creator Koichi Ishii, this game sees you take on the role of a young Seedling named Tethu (or Tethi, depending on which gender you choose, but I picked Tethu). Ever Oasis takes place in a vast desert, under threat by a malevolent force known as Chaos. Chaos has corrupted the local wildlife, turning them all into dangerous Chaos Monsters. As a Child of the Great Tree, Tethu has the unique ability to combine his powers with a water spirit to create an Oasis: a peaceful safe haven where people can seek shelter from Chaos. Together with the water spirit Esna, the last of her kind, you must venture out into the sands to fight back against Chaos, and recruit as many people into your Oasis as you can so that it may continue to thrive. The stakes are high: your Oasis is the only one left!

A typical day in Ever Oasis goes something like this: you wake up at home, go say good morning to Esna, and then check up on your residents to see if anyone's store needs a restock. Seedlings, the human-like people in this world, carry seeds in their hearts that can sprout into Bloom Booths, and these special plant-like kiosks are your town's main attraction for desert-bound travelers. People from all over will come to spend their hard-earned Dewadems (money) on all sorts of goods, and the residents are more than happy to share their profits with you. And you'll need them—being a chief isn't cheap! While I never ran out of money in my playthrough, Dewadems are still essential, as you'll have to spend them on every aspect of managing your village, including unlocking new Bloom Booths.

But hang on: what was that about Bloom Booths needing to be restocked? While most stores in RPGs are blessed with a magical supply of infinite items, Bloom Booths will always sell out eventually, and it's up to you to provide the goods they need to keep the cash (dew?) flowing. You can do this by converting the specific materials that particular resident needs into the goods they sell through a menu. As for where you get those materials... more on that later.

You can also spend your Dewadems on helpful decorative plants that provide buffs to your Bloom Booths. Bloom Booths come in several types based on what they sell—food, novelty, or fashion—and some decorations will draw in more customers to a certain type of Booth, but only if placed right next to the Booth in question. Since there's limited space in your Oasis to place stuff down, this becomes a puzzle: how do you make the most of the available space in order to maximize profits? Travelling merchants who often show up in town will offer these decorations to you, as well as a bunch of other useful things.

Bloom Booths are the lifeblood of your Oasis, but managing them is just one piece of this game's town-building puzzle. Some of your other chiefly responsibilities include:

• Completing sidequests for your residents (and non-resident visitors, who might be convinced to stay in your Oasis if you help them out)
• Leveling up your Oasis once it has enough residents, which provides lots of helpful benefits (like expanding the available space for Bloom Booths)
• Crafting new weapons, items, and gear at the Synthesis Tree in your house (very important!)
• Buying seeds and planting them in your garden to get garden-exclusive materials (farming game!!!)
• Hosting themed festivals to get tons of profits from one kind of Bloom Booth (yes, this does mean you need to re-arrange your entire Oasis to get the most out of the festival while it lasts)
• and assigning jobs to your residents, like having them take care of your crops or sending them out into desert expeditions

Sounds like a lot of systems, right? Thankfully, while Ever Oasis does grow considerably more complex as you progress through your adventure, it starts off super simple, with just one resident, one Bloom Booth, and a tiny Oasis. The first couple of days I spent playing it were very handholdy, as the game slowly introduced each new system to me one by one. It's almost too slow to be honest: I remember feeling like the tutorials would never end! But they do end eventually, and I think keeping the game from being too overwhelming was the right call in the end.

So that's all well and good, but... what about those materials I keep mentioning? Y'know, the things you need to keep Bloom Booths restocked, craft essential items, and generally just play the game? Where do you get those?

Simple:

Out there.

Battle in the dunes

Fighting monsters is your main source of material drops in Ever Oasis. When you leave the safety of your comfy desert village, you'll venture out into huge, wide-open zones to battle these fearsome creatures and gather what you need to keep your residents happy. I mean that literally, by the way: restocking fills up a happiness meter which directly adds to your maximum HP. Without it, your max HP is pathetically low, so doing well in the town-management side of the game is directly tied to combat! The environment itself is also rich with resources; you can use your weapon to break random pots and cacti to get more stuff, or interact with gathering spots like ore veins if you have someone in your party with the right gathering skill. But don't take too long: when night falls, even deadlier monsters show up!

Speaking of parties: whenever you leave the Oasis, you can take up to two residents along for the trip. They'll fight alongside you, and you can freely swap control between any of the three members in your party on the fly. All the characters in this game are unique from one another, as most of them are limited to using only one kind of weapon, and they each have unique passive skills, special moves, or navigation skills that can be used to solve puzzles and open up new areas. Different weapons not only behave differently, but each foe has a weakness to a certain weapon, encouraging you to change up your tactics and swap party members as the situation calls for it. All that is to say: the combat in Ever Oasis is really fun! Though the basic mechanics are simple (light attack, heavy attack, dodge roll... nothing you haven't seen before), there's enough strategy in most encounters to prevent the game from becoming a simple button masher.

It's not just Seedlings who can fight, by the way! There's also the snake-like Drauk who wield powerful spears...

The rabbit-like Lagoma who attack with their twinblades at lightning speed...

Or the... whatever the Serkah are supposed to be, but they have hammers and they're super strong so they're cool :)

(Credit goes to the Nintendo wiki for the above images)

The wilderness isn't the only place you can explore: there are tons of small caves—and a few big dungeons—tucked away in the nooks and crannies of the land. These caves are full of goodies (and monsters) for the intrepid desert adventurer, and you'll also sometimes find other travelers here, who will come visit your Oasis once you talk to them (and if you do their quests later, they'll become residents!).

The dungeons, on the other hand, are huge Zelda-like setpieces; they're chock-full of enemies, treasure chests, lots of puzzles, fearsome bosses, and they're the main vehicle the game uses to drive the story forward. It takes many in-game days to fully explore a dungeon, and you'll have to make full use of your squad's abilities to find the way forward in every room. Annoyingly, if you forgot to bring a character who has the specific ability you need to progress, you'll need to return your Oasis in order to change out your party, but the fact that you can warp back to the Oasis at any time and then warp back to the exact spot where you left means this isn't nearly as frustrating as it could've been.

Of course, no RPG is complete without a suite of excellent tunes to accompany the action. Thankfully, the Ever Oasis soundtrack, composed by Sebastian Schwartz (who has quite the resume, by the way), is excellent! There's a lovely new track to accompany every situation, from hanging out in your bustling Oasis to trekking through some ancient ruins. My favorite has to be the theme for Qarr Dunes—the song that plays when you first step out of your Oasis and into the wide open desert. It is such a spectacular sight, and really makes you feel like you're witnessing the opening chapter of an epic adventure, thanks in no small part to the music.

You've also probably noticed by now that Ever Oasis' world isn't your typical fantasy fare. The land of Ever Oasis, as well as the people and places residing within it, are all clearly inspired by ancient Egyptian aesthetics, and the result is a colorful and unique setting that really helps the game stand out from the crowd. It's a shame that a game with such a strong, distinct visual style is stuck on a handheld with a 240p screen; I bet Ever Oasis would look beautiful in HD.

Interestingly, according to an interview he did with USgamer, Koichi Ishii went on a trip to Egypt 10 years before the creation of the game. If you're interested, I'd recommend reading the interview after you're done with this article, as he goes into more detail about the art style and how it ties into the themes of the game's story.

"What I’ve been imagining in terms of world creation (from the original Final Fantasy up to the Mana games) became clearer when I travelled to Egypt 10 years ago. I was able to seize that opportunity and tie it into this project."

—Koichi Ishii

And now that we're on the topic of story...

The best for last

Ever Oasis is, for the most part, a light-hearted romp. It's loaded with funny dialogue, and the silly writing really adds to the game's charm. It feels very much like the kind of thing you would expect from a Nintendo-published game. But this is still a story about a group of people making a last stand to protect themselves from total annihilation, and the writers at Grezzo aren't afraid to twist a knife right through your heart when you least expect it.

Chaos is an enigma; for most of the game, its origins are unknown, how it functions is a mystery, and it can appear in the form of ominous purple plants at seemingly any time. All you know is that it has already destroyed every other Oasis one by one, leaving only Tethu and Esna to protect their citizens—and themselves—from meeting the same fate. By the time you reach the endgame, the plot has taken on a sorrowful, almost hopeless tone, and you've had enough time to fall in love with these characters to the point where you can't help but feel their sorrow too. And on top of that? No spoilers, but there's a shockingly sad twist late into the game. I was genuinely moved by Tethu's struggle, along with the few other main characters who support him—especially Esna.

Esna is the glue that holds this game's narrative together. As the last water spirit in the entire desert, she wants nothing more than to eradicate Chaos for good. But being a water spirit means she's confined to the Spirit Shrine in your Oasis, in the center of the Great Spring; she can never go anywhere, and has to rely on Tethu to actually do all the fighting. Despite this, she stays optimistic and does her best to support Tethu in any way she can. Her relentless positivity as she cheers you on throughout the adventure is a shining light amidst the darkness that Chaos represents—which is why it hurts so much more when her cheerful demeanor breaks as things take a turn for the worse near the end. It is impossible to play Ever Oasis and not have Esna win your heart, and it gives you a strong reason to keep trying even when things look their bleakest: I'm doing this for her.

In essence, Ever Oasis is a game about getting knocked down, and always choosing to get back up. "Never give up" is certainly not an uncommon theme for stories to have, and the classic trope of "we have to beat the darkness" might make you quote that one Squidward line, but there's a reason it's so common, y'know? People like to root for heroes! It's a powerful storytelling motif.

(I'm really glossing over a lot of the other narrative themes present in Ever Oasis here to focus on what hit me personally the hardest. Again, I definitely recommend reading the full interview I mentioned earlier!)

The ending of Ever Oasis destroyed me. While I will admit it is extremely difficult to make me cry... man. I wanted to. I didn't realize until the credits were rolling just how much I gotten attached to these characters, how much I felt for them! Tethu is a silent protagonist, and yet I couldn't help but vividly imagine how he was feeling, as if he had just told me himself! This game put the feels in me in a way that few other games do.

But I wonder... is it really okay to heap so much praise onto a game when the first 90% of it is great, but only the last 10% is amazing? I used to be a "gameplay first" kind of person, but Ever Oasis has made me reconsider what I value in games. Don't get me wrong: Ever Oasis has great gameplay, and it really scratches that "hey, this is kinda sorta like Rune Factory" itch for me, but I don't think great gameplay is enough to earn a slot into my personal hall of fame. Gameplay is what makes it fun, sure, but story is what makes you care. An excellent story, for me, is what propels a game from "that was pretty good!" territory to "all-time favorite".

And that's all my thoughts on Ever Oasis. Thank you for reading!

nintendo PLEASE put this game on switch i'm fucking begging you