Eventide

Category: Action, Arcade Plays: 37 Rating:

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How to Play

Game Overview

So Eventide is this weird hybrid of tower defense and action RPG, but it's set in this gorgeous, gloomy world where daylight is basically a myth. The visual style is like a painting come to life -- everything's got this soft, muted color palette with bright bursts of light when you use your powers. You're this lone guardian who has to protect these ancient sanctuaries from waves of shadow creatures that crawl out of the forest every night. What got me is the loop: during the day (which is more like a brief twilight) you're setting up traps and reinforcing walls, then at night you're out there fighting with this light magic that feels weighty and satisfying. It's not just sit-and-defend either -- you have to venture into the misty woods to find artifacts, which is tense because you're vulnerable and the enemies keep spawning. The vibe is lonely and desperate, like you're the last person alive in a fairytale gone wrong. Who'd like it? People who enjoy planning their base but also want to get their hands dirty in combat. It's not something you can just chill through -- you need to think about where to place traps so they funnel enemies into kill zones, and you have to manage your light resources carefully. The game doesn't explain everything upfront, which is annoying but also kinda cool when you figure out a trick on your own. I'd say it's for players who liked Bastion but wished it had more strategy elements, or anyone who wants a challenge that rewards experimentation over brute force.

About Eventide

So Eventide starts you off in this crumbling sanctuary called the Dawnhold, your main base. The first night is almost a tutorial -- you get a few basic light traps, a weak beam weapon called the Lumen Lance, and some wooden barricades. You're told to hold out until sunrise. That first wave of Shade Stalkers is slow, easy to pick off. You think you've got this handled. Then the second night hits and the game introduces the Wraiths, which phase through walls unless you've placed Light Wards on those surfaces. That's when the panic sets in. Your hands are busy placing wards, repositioning traps, aiming the lance at priority targets. The core loop is: daylight hours are for resource gathering and upgrading, dusk is for fortification, and night is pure survival. You explore the surrounding areas during the day -- the Whispering Woods, the Cinder Fields -- to collect sunstone shards and spectral essence from fallen enemies. Those materials let you upgrade your sanctuary's core, unlock new trap types like the Sunburst Mine or the Incandescent Cage, and improve your lance's charge shot. Mid-game throws in the Eclipse Hunters, these fast flying enemies that drop darkness pools on your defenses. You have to manually cleanse those pools with a charged light burst, which means you can't stay behind your walls the whole time. The most satisfying moments come when you chain a trap combo perfectly -- a Sunburst Mine launches a group of Shade Stalkers into the air, your Incandescent Cage traps them, and a well-timed lance shot clears them all. Later levels like the Veil Depths introduce environmental hazards, like geysers of shadow that damage you if you stand too long. You learn to kite enemies into those hazards. The difficulty curve is steep -- around world three, named bosses like the Nightweaver start appearing, requiring you to memorize attack patterns and use the environment. There's an upgrade system with three trees: Radiance (offensive light skills), Bastion (defensive structures), and Lore (passive effects like faster essence collection). You can't max all three in one playthrough, so you have to commit. The game doesn't tell you which tree is best for each boss. You learn by dying. The final stretch is brutally hard. You'll restart nights multiple times. But that moment when the sun finally breaks over Dawnhold after a flawless defense, with every trap spent and your lance overheated -- that's the hook. There's no clean finish. The mystery of the eternal night keeps pulling you back.

Tips & Tricks

Don't bother hoarding the basic light crystals for too long. They're common enough that you can afford to burn them on trap upgrades early, which makes those first few nights way less stressful. The mist-laden forests have these hidden alcoves that don't show up on your map until you're literally standing in them -- always sweep the edges of each zone before moving on. I learned this the hard way after missing a crucial artifact for two hours. The spectral enemies that glow red? They explode when killed, and that blast can trigger your own traps if you're standing too close. Keep your distance or lure them into a killbox. For the ancient sanctuaries, focus on reinforcing the main gate first; enemies will always path toward it over side walls, which is weird but consistent. Your light-based powers have a cooldown that's shorter than the tooltip suggests -- you can actually chain two stuns back-to-back if you time the second activation just as the first fades. This saved my run on level five where swarms get ridiculous. One tip for expeditions: never leave the base without at least five light flares. They don't just illuminate -- they slow down the big shadow brutes by a lot, giving you precious seconds to reposition. And if you're stuck on a boss night, try swapping your trap loadout entirely instead of optimizing the same one. I beat a roadblock instantly by switching from spikes to slowing traps.