Post-apocalyptic fiction is, historically speaking, a rather recent genre. Unlike, say, space-travelling sci-fi, which had first appeared in the 19th century, and gained prominence ever since, apocalyptic visions were typically consigned to terse, normally religion-inspired, verses, up until the 1950’s. By then, the possibility of global demise at the wrong press of the nuclear switch (either total or “just” civilizational) was on everyone’s mind, providing fertile ground for writers exploring what will come afterwards. Today, the stakes are somewhat different, and open nuclear warfare had largely faded from the public mind, but the genre has lived on.

In fact, it’s now particularly common to see it in shorter stories, and for a good reason; when the characters present are the last in the whole world, the audience are naturally pre-disposed to care about them, and so one might even dispense with other writing about their character. However, that approach requires audiences to believe in the apocalypse itself, and paradoxically, one of the easiest ways to ruin it is by going too far with the grit and darkness, to the point it reaches self-parody. I’ve already written earlier about this phenomenon with Blue Marble; unfortunately, Everything’s going to be OK is not much better. It might not have the repellent storytelling of BM (or much of a story in the first place), but its spectacular mismanagement of “realistic” gameplay is often equally infuriating.

Aesthetics (art, design and sound)

By and large, the best part of the game. The art is custom and it is pretty fine, especially given the time limits. The characters, maps, the battlers, the backgrounds are generally kept at a consistently good level. Some things are better (the on-screen enemy sprites, or the orange-brown desert palette) and some worse (the basic ghosts, or the visibly rushed cave backgrounds near the end), but on the whole, it’s very solid, and makes a nice change from RTP. The mapping is also fine on its own (see Gameplay), being open enough to give the feel of the real desert, yet with enough features to make areas look sufficiently distinct. The sound side of things, though, is mostly just there; the main menu & game over tracks are better than usual, but that’s about it.

Storyline



Thomas the merchant/stamp-collector ghost, and the only one in the game who speaks on a regular basis.

It’s minimalist, to the point of being practically non-existent. We start with yet another deep-sounding nihilistic quote about humanity destroying itself et al, as appears to be par the course for the pretentious post-apoc. Then, the car with our main character, Max, stops in the middle of the desert, apparently because fuel’s out. You don’t know for sure, though, because she never comments on the matter, or on much else, actually. She’s a silent protagonist, and the only times she ever says anything is when you approach the blue glowing-orb things, which are essentially spots where she reminisces about a bit of her past. You also encounter various ghosts (nameless, save for Thomas the merchant equivalent) that say one thing or another before disappearing as mysteriously as they have arrived. These are about the only things that give some structure to what’s going on, and Everything’s going to be OK is otherwise an inexorable walk through some screens towards the ending, and some story with the couple of mandatory "boss fights" thrown in it. None of it is compelling is compelling is the slightest. Traditional defeatist stuff from ghosts about how “It’s spreading too quickly now” “There’s nothing you can do”, etc. , etc. is really flat, especially since we know nothing about why the apocalypse happened, or the people that were lost, or how she was supposed to stop it in the first place. Everything to do with the supposed end of the world is so flimsy and shallow it’s practically impossible to get invested in it. In fact, the one somewhat fascinating thing about the game is the possibility that it’s all on purpose and there was no apocalypse in the first place. Instead, that might just be what Max convinced herself of, conjuring up ghosts from inside her own mind while wandering through a completely modern desert, just to keep on believing that she's doomed and there’s no way out.

It’s definitely a new spin on a familiar subject, and I admire it if that’s what the creator was going for. Even when viewed that way, though, EigtbO peters out, because there’s simply not much reason to care about her character. When the ghosts occasionally ask her questions like “Why have you really be running? Do you think you can escape from your own two feet?“, we don’t really know the answer any better than the ghosts, and so any impact is lost. Yes, orb flashbacks do give some context but it’s too thin, too insubstantial, being largely limited to the stuff nearly all teenagers can relate to. Nothing there is remotely powerful enough to explain her fleeing to the desert, and there’s nothing else for us to latch on to. The overwhelming impression we form of Max is one of utter passivity, as she never bothers to react either to what others say, or to the life-and-death circumstances around her. Because of it, she never seems to evolve or change throughout the game (character growth from level 1 one to 5 doesn’t count). This is true even of the ending, which is supposedly tragic, yet feels like a weak shrug. It gives no meaning to the journey: one the contrary, you could’ve gotten the same result by not going anywhere and simply staying still at the start for 5 minutes.

Gameplay



You see, because the game is set in the desert, it includes a Thirst meter alongside the health one. The idea is rare, but not totally unique: the brilliant A Hint of A Tint also included it, as great way to draw attention to one of the storyline’s focal points. There, Mandy’s inability to drink the Sanctuary’s pink water, and the ever-growing risk of death from dehydration, was contrasted by the native Tyalinne’s need to actively consume it from the fountains. These fountains were frequent, and so actually dying from dehydration was practically impossible for Tyalinne, (at least, in the Story Mode) but that was part of the point about her world. Everything’s Going to be OK goes the completely opposite route by making dehydration completely central to the proceedings, yet in a way that ruins all plausibility in process.

Simply put, Max runs out of Thirst way too fast, and too little of it is restored. You start with Thirst at 75, but it drains away by about 1 point every 2-3 seconds, so that you’ll have about 30-40 by the time you get to the desert proper, and things are not much better there. Thirst can only be allayed by drinking beverages like Coke or Iced Tea that have to be bought from Thomas, and their effectiveness is about 10 times less what you would reasonably expect it to be. Invariably, a simple walk from one end of the map to the other will wipe out the 5 Thirst points you just gained from Coke. An Iced Tea or Bottled Water won’t last much longer, especially if you’ve gotten into a fight, since 1 Thirst point is always removed with every turn. For most of the game, you’ll just have to get used to walking with 10-16 Thirst, and regularly reload if you’ve gone too far off and cannot come back to shop without running out of Thirst. (You can save at any time, but there are only 3 slots, because this game is hardcore.)

This extremely fast rate is completely arbitrary and unbelievable: to put it in context, at 25 Thirst, you’ll have to drink 10 bottles of Coke in a row to get back to the starting levels (you obviously won’t ever get that much currency, though, so stop dreaming). Yet, the game somehow manages to make it worse with the battles against local fauna like Coyotes, Hawks and Western Diamondback snakes. They’re just all too easy, over in a couple of turns, and once Max gets to level 4-5, she’ll be able to wipe them out in a turn while not taking any damage in return. Moreover, you get the local currency (Stamps, for a vague story reason) from all those battles too, somehow (do Diamondbacks all swallow them instead of rocks as part of their diet, or something?). The end result is that you’re encouraged to battle as much as you can in order to get Stamps to pay for beverages and avoid running out of Thirst, and this makes complete mockery of the survival aspect in process. It’s practically impossible to believe Max is so badass she can regularly beat Coyotes with her bare hands, yet cannot last 15 minutes without drinking something. Lastly, it also makes the same mistake Blue Marble also had, and makes the enemies respawn as soon as you leave the screen. As soon as you figure out a route from Tomas to the end of the map and back, one that also takes you past a couple of enemies, you’ll be able to slowly grind Stamps to survive without fear, and remove the last bit of challenge from the game.



As for the actual battle system, I’ll give it credit for being more complex than the spacebar mash of something like Blue Marble or Fishermen and the Worm, with the player always able to use the four options above in battle. Unfortunately, the end result is not much different, as long as you manage to match the right attack to an enemy: Punch for most of them, Rocks for Bats and Hawks (which have more health than Coyotes, for some reason) and Comfort during the two ghost “boss fights”. You’re never challenged to use first one kind of attack, then the other, while Defend is useless, since no-one has any strong attacks to guard against, and using it simply wastes a turn and lets you lose another point of Thirst. I suppose I could also mention Tomas’ shop in more detail: the one bright spot is the believably large assortment of canteen food he offers throughout the game, all with pretty good description as well. Some restore Health, some Thirst, Apple Juice restores both (so get it early and often) and some, like Crackers, restore Health while also lowering Thirst, which is tantamount to suicide under the game’s mechanics. You’re not shown the actual numbers they restore, but worry not! In a stroke of “brilliance”, they’re always equal to the item’s price, which is why Coke only restores 5 Thirst out of 75 (and 100 max).

Lastly, the game will crash if you try to reload after exiting to menu because of "Khas Light Effects" script glitch (a bug I’ve also seen earlier in the Afterlife games), and it also crashed during one Coyote encounter after it failed to load the correct battle back. There are also some typos for the developer.



Conclusion



Everything’s Going to be OK takes about 30 minutes to finish according to it’s internal clock, and quite a bit more than when accounting for all the reloading you’ll have to do. I can emphatically say it’s not worth that much time. It has above-average graphics and some nice touches here and there, but they’re undone by the lack of a compelling story and an untested central mechanic. If given more time, the two developers probably could've made a memorable game here, but the ways things stand, Everything’s Going to be OK is not that game.