Even though there are some gameplay loop changes to My Time at Evershine relative to Sandrock, story is still king. We know what most of you want: a deep and moving story full of fun characters and bathing hotties... plus some surprising twists. Whether you agree or not, the emphasis is on “deep and moving story with fun characters.” We think we captured some of that lightning in a bottle with Sandrock, and we’ll attempt to do so again with Evershine.
First, let’s address the name. As many have noted, Evershine is not on the map, it’s not a City-State somewhere in the Alliance. Heck, it’s not even the name of your settlement, that’d be Settlement 2. So, what is Evershine? As the story goes, when Peach and his band of friends went around Ethea punching holes in clouds some one hundred years ago, the cuesta ridge above your settlement was the southernmost territory they went to. After they used their miracle machine to dissipate the cloud layers in the area and the sun shined through once more after a couple centuries of darkness, one of his friends planted a peach seed at the top of the cuesta in celebration. After covering the seed with soil, that person said: “I hope this tree will grow up in forever sunshine...” “Uh, that’s not possible, it still gets dark at night.” Peach replied. “Hey, shut up and let me have a moment here!” Only the first sentence was remembered. Having said that, this is not the reason the game is called Evershine, but it is the inception. The real reason is *redacted*.
One thing we did pretty well in Sandrock was to have characters with issues at the start of the game, then over the course of the narrative, have them overcome the issues. It’s a winning formula for this type of genre and we will be continuing that in Evershine. With the way the game is set up, where the player is gathering people with no better options than to come all the way to the fringes of the Alliance next door to an antagonistic empire, we have open season on the type of stories we can come up with. Some of them do get a bit dark, like what happened with *redacted*. We might be moving from pg into pg-10/13 territory, still no cursing though.
As we mentioned before, the main story length of Evershine will be about the same as Portia’s. This way, it won’t drag like it did during some parts of Sandrock. Quests like Catori World or the meeting would be sidelined as a sidequest or post game content in the new game. While Sandrock was about fixing something that was broken, this game is about creating something new with your “crew.” We want you to feel proud of your baby (the settlement) and your achievements at the end of the game, glad to have spent your time there.
Hmm, we just went through the whole article without actually introducing the plot of the game. We can’t just leave it like that, right? See, the story is about *redacted*. As the Governor, it’s your responsibility to resolve *redacted*. Along the way, you’ll meet old friends and new challenging enemies. Eventually, there will be *redacted*. Sounds epic, doesn’t it? We hope you’re looking forward to it!
Edited by Marketing