EVAC review

There’s a very small minority of mobile developers that we actively go out of our way to support here at Know Your Mobile, but Hexage is most certainly one of the lucky few. The company’s track record is exemplary, with mega hits such as Buka, Everlands and Radiant all ranking very highly both on this site and with the gaming public in general.

Hexage is only a small studio, but you can tell that its staff put their hearts and souls into their titles, and have an uncanny knack for coming up with genuinely appealing concepts when so many of their rivals continue to pump out generic rubbish.

Hopefully this gushing intro will give you some indication of just how excited we were when news reached our ears of another Hexage classic in the making: EVAC. Just as Radiant was a glorious, retro-themed take on Taito’s classic Space Invaders, EVAC skilfully updates Namco’s Pac-Man, but also adds in plenty of its own tricks.

Like Pac-Man, you’re dropped into a maze and expected to gobble up dots. You’re also tasked with avoiding enemies that can kill just by touching your square-like character. However, it’s there that the dull similarity ends. EVAC boasts a storyline, distinct characters and a range of pick-up weaponry and special items to help you through each level. You’ll even find puzzles to undertake, such as tripping various switches and sliding blocks to cut off the advance of nefarious foes, as well as hiding places which conceal your presence from patrolling guards.

The real genius behind EVAC is the subtle manner in which it introduces all of these additional elements. Pac-Man veterans will be perfectly at home with the opening level – which serves as a tutorial more than anything else – but later stages drip-feed core gameplay aspects. By the time you get past the first few challenges, you’ll have to deal with several different game ideas running in tandem, and it’s then that you realise that Hexage has outpaced the central notion of Pac-Man and created something that is wholly unique in the mobile gaming arena. Few developers have the talent to keep so many balls in the air without the gameplay becoming hopeless confusing - at no point does EVAC feel anything other than a perfectly-orchestrated slice of gaming brilliance.

A special mention must go to the control system, which is one of the best touchscreen efforts we’ve yet seen. At first glance it would appear that the traditional ‘virtual’ D-pad is present and correct, but the one in EVAC operates somewhat differently than others. Instead of tapping directly onto the pad itself, you simply have to touch a place on the screen which is relative to a particular direction. For example, to move your character left, you simply tap anywhere on the left side of the pad. The system works brilliantly, and removes the frustrating imprecision that one usually associates with virtual D-pads.

The presentation is just as glorious. Like Radiant, EVAC boasts a cool ‘neon’ style graphic engine. Everything on-screen glows with a soft, luminous quality, making the game seem both retro and modern at the same time. Just as has been the case with all of Hexage’s titles, the audio is equally praiseworthy, with catchy chiptune-style melodies and punchy sound effects. As with any level-based adventure title, EVAC’s appeal diminishes once you’ve completed the game. Thankfully, the focus on getting the best score possible extends its lifespan considerably, and the scoring system is quite clever, building in combo multipliers and other elements. This won’t keep you coming back indefinitely, but it certainly helps maintain your interest.

EVAC is nothing short of a mobile masterpiece, but then we’ve come to expect this from Hexage. We await the company’s next release with heady expectation, but in the meantime EVAC will keep us glued to our phones for quite a while.