Ever Oasis

Ever Oasis is an action role-playing game featuring elements of town management, dungeon exploration, and hack-and-slash gameplay. Players assume the role of a young Seedling named Tethu or Tethi, depending on which gender the player chooses, who is tasked by a water spirit named Esna with building and managing the last remaining oasis in a desert world threatened by a corrupted element called Chaos. The two primary gameplay modes, oasis management and desert exploration, are intended to link and support each other in a cycle.

The oasis is the central hub and home base. The player expands it by recruiting travelers and residents from the various tribes encountered across the desert, with each new resident contributing to the oasis's population and overall level. Once recruited, residents can open Bloom Booths; personalized shops that line the oasis's main street and sell a variety of items, ranging from potions and juices to weapons, robes, and turbans. The player is responsible for keeping these shops stocked by supplying residents with materials gathered in the field; in return, a share of the resulting profits is collected in the form of Dewadems, the game's currency.

Ever Oasis is set in the vast desert of Vistrahda, which was originally a lush land until a chaotic force known as Chaos ravaged it thousands of years ago. Chaos destroyed all the oases except two. The story focuses on Tethu the younger sibling of Nour, who was the chief of one of the last remaining oases. When Nour's oasis was destroyed by the Black Dragon, a being consumed by Chaos, Nour wounded the dragon before being consumed by it, becoming Sheut.

Before succumbing to the Chaos, Nour seals Tethu in a pod and saves them from harm. Tethu wakes up in front of a small oasis and meets Esna, the last Water Spirit. They make a pact to build another oasis together. Being confined to her spring, Esna communicates with Tethu through a desert beetle, Khepri.

Director and producer Koichi Ishii was inspired to create Ever Oasis based on a trip to Egypt in the late 2000s. Originally conceived as a "compact, playable game", Ever Oasis eventually grew much bigger in scope. Ishii wanted to try something different from the formula of having players travel through many different areas on a quest to save the world, the central design goal became protecting and developing the oasis. He had the concept of a town-managing community but feared it would overlap with Animal Crossing, and so made an effort to differentiate the two.

Ever Oasis was difficult to put together from both of its central mechanics, which were dungeon crawling and oasis management. Ishii reflected that even though the original concept of Ever Oasis had been designed logically, developing it proved difficult. Its combat system drew on Ishii's experience with action role-playing games. He described the fundamental concept to be similar in structure to that found in Final Fantasy XI, calling his choice of battle system a logical continuation of his career.

Ever Oasis was met with "generally positive" reviews according to Metacritic. Its town-building system, replayability and genre-blending elements were the most acclaimed aspects, while its slow beginning, inconsistent AI, and underdeveloped story were the most criticized.

The central gameplay loop, shuttling between managing the oasis and exploring dungeons, garnered acclaim. IGN reviewer Brendan Graeber felt the design made even necessary maintenance tasks feel worthwhile rather than chores. He concluded that Ever Oasis "managed to make me care as much about preserving my town as I do about saving the world". Morgan Sleeper of Nintendo Life found it "fresh and undeniably new", despite its developers' earlier influences, praising how the oasis and exploration parts connected into a harmonious whole. Destructoid 's CJ Andriessen commended its Legend of Zelda-inspired dungeon design and the way the two halves of its gameplay complemented each other, calling it a worthy release on the 3DS.