Everhood 📖 Wikipedia

Everhood: An Ineffable Tale of the Inexpressible Divine Moments of Truth
Logo
Developers	Chris Nordgren Jordi Roca[5]
Publishers	Foreign Gnomes Surefire.Games[6] BlitWorks[7]
Programmer	Jordi Roca
Artist	Chris Nordgren
Composers	Chris Nordgren Dancefloor is Lava ROZKOL Cazok KM_EXP Chipzel David Wise Manami Matsumae Keiji Yamagishi Disasterpeace YMCK Gonzalo Varela Stefan Moser AceMan Evan Goertzen Halley Labs Lewmoth Jayman (OurMusicBox) [7][8]
Engine	Unity[9]
Platforms	Microsoft Windows Nintendo Switch PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
Release	Windows, Switch March 4, 2021[1][2] PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X/S September 28, 2023[3][4]
Genres	Adventure, role-playing, rhythm
Mode	Single-player

Everhood: An Ineffable Tale of the Inexpressible Divine Moments of Truth is a 2021 video game developed by Chris Nordgren and Jordi Roca, who go by the studio name Foreign Gnomes. The game's plot involves Red, a living doll trying to recover their stolen arm from Gold Pig, an immortal inhabitant of the land of Everhood.^[6] Along the way, the player allies with a small creature by the name of Blue Thief, and encounters a variety of characters who either attempt to aid or deter Red on their quest to retrieve their arm.

The game started development in 2018,^[10] and was released on Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch on March 4, 2021.^[2] Everhood: Eternity Edition, an expanded rerelease of the game, was released on September 28, 2023 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.^[3] Everhood has been met with positive reception for its gameplay, presentation, and musical score.

A sequel, titled Everhood 2, released on Windows and Nintendo Switch on March 4, 2025 to "generally favorable" reception, though it has not been as well received as the original.^[11][12][13]

Everhood's world is composed of multiple separate areas, such as a carnival, a mushroom forest, and a desert. Many of these areas are not directly connected, but can be accessed from the central Cosmic Hub, an empty space with paths connecting various doors. These areas are inhabited by a diverse cast of characters, many named after colors; such as the player character itself, Red, as well as Blue Thief, Professor Orange, and the Green, Purple, and Brown Mages, among others.

It is gradually revealed that Everhood is the tattered remains of an ancient realm of immortals. Its remaining inhabitants mostly do not enjoy existence, being driven to insanity by countless years of boredom, but fear oblivion too much to accept death. The player must choose between killing them or leaving them to their immortal existence.

At the beginning of the game, a disembodied voice directly addresses the player, asking them to "abandon their humanity and accept immortality" to enter the land of Everhood. After accepting, the player is given control over Red, a mute wooden doll who awakens after their arm is stolen by Blue Thief. Following Blue Thief’s path, they meet Frog, who engages in a battle serving as the game's tutorial.

Red continues forward into a nightclub. Guards and patrons bar Red's way to a backroom where the hostile Gold Pig, who keeps Red's missing arm, awaits. Gold Pig throws Red into an incinerator, an almost-unwinnable battle. If Red loses, the disembodied voice offers the player an "Absolute Truth"—that death is not the end—and brings Red back.

Whether they live or have to be brought back, the incinerator breaks down, Red exits it, and discovers that Gold Pig has stolen Blue Thief's legs and abandoned them. They set out together to find Gold Pig, retrieve their stolen limbs, and understand the nature of Everhood. Along the way, the two meet and are attacked by many of Everhood's residents, including a sentient trash can, Professor Orange and their assistant Grundall, and the insane Green Mage.

Red and Blue Thief eventually travel to Gold Pig's temple and fight them. After losing to Red and being pressured by their allies, Gold Pig returns Blue Thief and Red’s limbs. After retrieving their arm, Red is interrupted by Frog, who reveals that Everhood’s inhabitants are eons-old immortals suffering from an eternity of boredom and stagnation, and tasks the player to "free" them by ending their existence.

Red is then returned to Gold Pig's temple, and begins their mission to bring Everhood to an end. They can now return to the various realms to kill the characters they have met along the way, many of whom refuse to die and will put up a fight, though a few willingly accept their fate. Alternatively, they can avoid killing anyone, to the anger of Frog.

If the player chooses to kill everyone, the recurring Lost Spirits guide Red to killing the sun itself, the force which was keeping them stuck in Everhood. Afterwards, the disembodied voice from earlier begins a process of "Reconciliation", in which Red faces the spirits of those they’ve killed, until a humanoid figure named Pink interrupts the fight and reveals themselves to have been using Red as a vessel. They were previously given the player's role of ending the world's existence earlier on, but quit partway through.

The spirits accept Pink’s explanation, and Pink leaves to kill the disembodied voice, revealed to be the universe itself. After doing so, they, the spirits of everyone else, and a figure resembling the Buddha say their farewells to the world in the form of one last battle. In the end, the player may choose to learn the last "Absolute Truth"—that there are no absolute truths.

Alternatively, if the player refuses to kill anyone, Frog attempts to force the player to do so via a battle. If Frog is not killed during the battle, they reveal themselves to be a Lost Spirit trapped in the world, and the disembodied voice lets them out. From this point, the player may leave the world as it is, or return to finish Frog's mission. Endings besides this and the normal ending include one where the player kills the developers. one where the player walks down an exceedingly long corridor, and another where Red is destroyed and Professor Orange subsequently creates a new body for Pink to inhabit, known as Yellow; the events of this last alternate ending are referenced in Everhood 2.

Everhood is described by Screen Rant as an adventure RPG that focuses on a battle system based on a rhythm game as opposed to a strategy or turn-based combat system.^[14] Similar to Guitar Hero, the battlefield consists of five lanes that the player can move between freely. Each enemy in the game has their own battle theme, and will time their attacks to the song's beat. However, unlike standard rhythm games, the player is meant to dodge the enemy's attacks rather than hitting them.^[15] At the beginning of the game, attacks can only be avoided by jumping over them or dodging to the side, but after acquiring Red's stolen arm, the player can absorb attacks and fire them back at the enemy. Initially, the player must survive for the entire length of the song to progress, but later-game battles loop until the enemy's health is drained by deflecting their attacks.^[14] The difficulty level, which can be changed at any time between battles, only affects the amount of health the player and enemies have, rather than causing the enemies' attack patterns to change.^[16]

Everhood began development in 2018 as a collaboration between Spanish game developer Jordi Roca and Swedish visual effects artist Chris Nordgren.^[10][17] At the time, Roca was a freelance developer with a background in mobile development from studio LittleStone, and Nordgren was working as an artist for Mojang Studios on the team for Minecraft Dungeons. The two started development of a game together that wouldn't compete with the projects they were already working on.^[18] A demo of Everhood was released on Game Jolt^[19] and itch.io in August 2018, and development of a full release based on the demo was announced in December of that year. The demo was described as taking 4-5 months to create.^[20] The game was built using Unity; battles were designed by starting with a song, then developing a character concept that would fit it.^[9] Musical artists would generally develop a song based on a theme that developers Nordgren and Roca would then work around to crate a character and battle that matched; with more pivotal battles in the game, musical composition was more pointedly directed to deliver the desired effect within the story. The game's story was largely improvised as development went on, with the main theme - that the journey is "something [that] we should cherish", according to Nordgren. He has noted that Undertale is a major inspiration for the game;^[17] another cited inspiration is Yume Nikki.^[21]

During development of the game, Nordgren started experiencing severe pain that made it difficult to perform basic tasks. He was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in May 2019. The game was being developed in chronological order, and around the time of Nordgren's illness, the game up to the point of Red retrieving his arm had been developed, but not tested, and was thought to be 60 to 80% complete.^[18] According to Roca, Nordgren's failing health informed the themes of the latter half of the game, which revolve around uncertainty towards the future. Nordgren quickly recovered after receiving medication, and was able to dedicate more of his time to working on Everhood.^[10] The second half of the game, post-Red retrieving his arm, took longer to develop than the first half despite reusing many of the same assets, as it required a lot more playtesting and discussion.^[18]

The developers' studio name, Foreign Gnomes, was chosen because of the importance of gnomes to Everhood and the members' difference in nationality. It was used in place of the phrase "created by Chris Nordgren and Jordi Roca", which was "too long" to use repeatedly. Everhood's subtitle, "An Ineffable Tale of the Inexpressible Divine Moments of Truth", is taken from combining the names of three albums by psybient music group Shpongle.^[10] Everhood was originally planned to release in the fourth quarter of 2020, but the release was delayed to 2021 so as to avoid competing with bigger titles. During the development period after making the choice to delay the game, four of the five possible endings were added in.^[18]

Everhood received positive reviews upon its release, with several reviewers commenting on the variety of musical scores^[26][31] and high level of quality in how battles are presented.^[15] Zoey Handley of Destructoid praised the music in the game, but noted that the story threw in too many plot twists and critiqued spelling errors and long load times.^[6] Nintendo World Report's Jordan Rudek praised the game's rhythm-based combat and humor and called it "an instant classic", while also noting the grammar and spelling errors within the game and long loading times.^[25]

Some writers drew parallels to the game's inspiration Undertale in their reviews.^[14] Shaun Musgrave wrote briefly on the game for TouchArcade, stating that it borrowed a bit too heavily from Undertale and also finding the game fairly short and the gameplay difficult to immediately grasp.^[28] In a review for Eurogamer, Antonino Fiore described Everhood as the "anti-Undertale" in its themes, but also found that it had difficulty differentiating itself from its inspiration.^[29]

Developer and publisher BlitWorks worked on an expanded rerelease of Everhood, titled Everhood: Eternity Edition, which includes 16 additional battles with music from 10 artists: Chipzel, David Wise, Disasterpeace, Manami Matsumae, Keiji Yamagishi, YMCK, Gonzalo Varela, Stefan Moser, AceMan and Evan Goertzen.^[7] These extra battles are accessed via the main menu rather than appearing within the story.^[32] In addition to releasing on Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch like the original Everhood, Eternity Edition was also available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.^[3] The PlayStation versions received scores of 7 and 8/10. Issues raised were the potentially overwhelming visuals and lack of differences between difficulty levels.^[16][33][34]

In June 2023, publisher Foreign Gnomes announced a sequel titled Everhood 2. It released March 4, 2025 on Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch, exactly four years after the release of Everhood.^[11] Everhood 2 takes place in the same setting as Everhood, though its story is largely disconnected.^[35] The game received "generally favorable" reception overall,^[12][13] but was described by some reviewers as not reaching the same highs as the original Everhood.^[36][37]