Fun-filled fight for survival...
Take down hordes of enemies in this cute, post-apocalyptic top-down treat
Evil Diary
(PEGI 16) PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox X/S, Switch, PC
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IF I’M being honest, the apocalypse has never looked this cute.
Evil Diary is a top-down action shooter that follows the journey of Eve, a survivor living in the ruins of New York City.
Set in 1997, three years after an alien attack reduced the metropolis to rubble, people and animals have been transformed into hideous, bloodthirsty creatures.
But there’s hope, a safe zone is said to exist outside the city limits and Eve decides to save herself rather than wait to be rescued.
If you’re expecting a deep storyline after that, you’ll be disappointed, this is the end of the world at its simplest – but that’s not to say you won’t have fun while you’re there.
Being a top-down, the action takes place in a corridor-shaped arena with enemies filtering in from the left and the right. Each of the 32 levels, or in this case ‘chapters’, requires you to stay alive long enough to clear a certain number of enemies, usually 30 or 50.
To begin with, that’s not too onerous a task. Enemies move slowly and don’t swarm around you, meaning you can sweep through the first couple of chapters in a matter of minutes.
But as you’d expect, that changes as the game progresses, until you are dodging flying ghouls and laserfiring cannons on a lift in a bid to get out of the city and onto the open road to safety.
Downed enemies drop items like extra lives and coins. The coins can be used to buy different fighters – there’s a pigtailed Eve, a fiery redheaded fighter who fires heartshaped bullets from her gun, and what looks like a duck with a chainsaw. If you can earn enough to buy him, he’s great fun and makes mincemeat of enemies easily.
The bad guys are a heady mix of aliens, mutants and some weird, purple Nosferatu-looking creatures that shamble towards you.
Sadly there are no boss levels here, which leads to a sense of déjà vu as you progress through the game.
Apart from some motorcycle action towards the end, the whole game is just running through similarlooking dark set pieces flashed through with red and purple.
I can’t talk about the game without mentioning the soundtrack, which starts off dark and brooding to set the tone, then descends into a full on, almost thrash metal affair.
It suits the action to be fair, and as the game is so short – under an hour to complete – it doesn’t outstay its welcome.
The end of each chapter gives you some brief stats – how many enemies you killed and the time it took you to do it.
This adds to replayability, as fans of speed running will be up for the challenge of bettering that time on their next play through.
All in all this is a simple but fun game. Not too taxing, but not so long that you get bored of playing.
And it’s perfectly priced too, at less than £5, so you can treat yourself to a new game without feeling too guilty.
Buy it: On Xbox for £4.99 from xbox.com, on PS5 for £3.99 from store.playstation.com, on Switch for £4.99 from nintendo.co.uk/ and on PC for £4.99 from store.steampowered.com
This is the end of the world at its simplest – but that’s not to say you won’t have fun