Review: Evil Diary (Nintendo Switch)

Evil Diary is a limited range side-scroller with a very simple premise—shoot everything that moves and hope you don’t die. Just another day at the office, right? Recent events have left our hero all alone in the big city, with an unending army of undead, alien things all bent on killing you. You have your wits and a pistol, which doesn’t sound like much. And it isn’t.

Let’s see what we do have here. The visuals are going for the retro 8 Bit thing, and they do it reasonably well. The graphics are pixelated and mostly dark (given the theme of the story, it’s appropriate). But there are splashes of color, and it’s easy enough to distinguish what things are supposed to be. Since most of the baddies are aliens, it doesn’t matter much what they look like; this is a game which follows the old mantra: “If it moves, shoot it.”

Speaking of moving around, the controls are pretty easy; you can use either the direction buttons or the left stick. All you have to worry about is up, down, left, right. There is no running, no jumping, no ducking, no hiding—just keep moving to avoid being hit, and keep shooting. There are sometimes obstacles in your path, so the range of movement might be limited. Be careful or you could get yourself stuck in a bottleneck that can lead you to taking extra hits. As you probably anticipated, you only get a limited number of hit points, so you have to be a bit careful. The first few rounds are pretty easy, so there isn’t much worry there. After things get a bit more hectic, the game will drop first aid kits. These will restore you to full hit points, but they don’t hang around forever. Be judicious about picking them up (just touch them to use them).

Now, let’s talk about the music, because we have to have music as we slay the hordes of aliens and undead. The developers said this game has a heavy metal soundtrack, and they are technically correct. The music is well done, it’s high energy, and it doesn’t take your attention off the game play, which could get you dead. Depending on your personal tastes in music, the soundtrack is not so metal as to be off-putting to most gamers, but metal enough to appeal to those of us who like our tunes a bit heavy. It’s most akin to epic metal, but nowhere near thrash. Those who know the metal family tree might start nodding…and maybe throwing horns ( |,,| ).

Now we get down to the heart of the thing: gameplay. Evil Diary has very few elements; it really is just move up, down, left, right, and shoot stuff while avoiding taking damage. It is very basic but satisfying in its purity. It also isn’t very difficult, but you do have to pay attention. There are no weapon enhancements or other upgrades you see in a lot of games of this type. The game does offer a few power-ups (like the lightning bolt which, if you get to it in time, will make you invulnerable for a few seconds), but there don’t seem to be any permanent improvements to your situation upon which you can build. There are some between-level shootouts where you just have to hit the fire button as fast as possible to kill the alien before it gets to you. At one point, as you try to escape the city, you get to ride a motorcycle and shoot things.

You only get to go in one direction, so you are limited in movement. You can purchase a new skin and go from blonde to red-head to chainsaw duck (I guess it’s a thing), but cosmetic upgrades lack any real draw for me.

All things considered, Evil Diary is a bit of fun. At press time, Evil Diary is on sale in the Nintendo eShop for $3.99. It’s worth it at that price point, but be aware that Evil Diary is a bit shallow as gaming experiences go.