Robotron, Smash TV, the Phobia series, Crimsonland, Mutant Storm... bird's-eye-view shooters have quite a lineage behind them, and the gist of the genre remained almost unchanged since the early arcade days. VH Games' Evil Invasion adds a new twist to the common theme, slapping on an RPG-like character development system on what's otherwise a pretty standard genre representative.

The familiar "kill or be killed" story set in a high fantasy universe casts you as a lone hero fighting against varying monster types with distinctive attacks and behavior - for example, garden-variety melee-attacking trolls, range-attacking mummies, and enemy mages capable of summoning a horde of monsters at will. With no physical weapons to use or pick up (your character seems to be entirely reliant on his innate magic powers), all you have at your disposal is an arsenal of spells gained through a leveling system almost as complex as some found in full-fledged RPGs.

Each kill will add a couple of points to your experience meter, increasing your level when a fixed amount of XP is gained, giving you a chance to assign extra points to your character's attributes as well as to improve your skills. Strength governs over your health pool, dexterity and stamina improve your speed and health regeneration, and the mind attributes (intelligence and wisdom), as expected, affect your mana pool. Due to a few pool-refilling spells (sacrificing health can grant you mana points, and healing spells, obviously, do the opposite), with a bit of strategy and luck it is completely possible to survive even in most dire of situations. Grabbing a potion of the right type (monsters tend to drop a variety of goodies at times) and using a spell to replenish the other pool can be a lifesaver, leaving your character in almost mint condition after the maneuver.

The skill tree, not counting your initial attack power, consists of twenty elemental spells (with four gods representing each element), all of them with a mandatory level prerequisite. RPG players will feel right at home as the spells are of a somewhat generic variety, with an elemental protection system thrown in for good measure. Some monsters (in fact, in later levels, most of the monsters) can have an impervious elemental aura around them, making them invulnerable to a specific element represented by your attack spells. Luckily, common sense tells us that there's no need to have more than two different elemental attacks to beat this system, so it doesn't mean you have to spread your skills too thin, it just spices the game up a bit.

There's no two-player mode yet though it has been announced as a future addition, so that leaves just two gameplay modes - the quest mode (available in three difficulties), offering ten different levels, and the survival mode (hardcore difficulty only), pitting you against infinite enemy numbers on a single map until you give up or die from exhaustion. The online highscore table (a feature most indie and casual games boast nowadays, which is quite commendable) saving the survival mode scores can be updated through the game itself, with no need for clunky external updaters. That, however, might not be such a great idea, as the competition is extremely fierce and there doesn't appear to be a way to attain the highest score - the top few players are actually listed as having "999999" points, which seems a bit hard to beat... Quite discouraging for a newcomer.

Graphics: (+)
Evil Invasion is most certainly no Chaos Engine in terms of level design, as everything is happening on a single screen with nothing to interact with apart from the enemies and the items you can pick up. The no-nonsense gameplay is paired with equally simplistic (but well-done - virtually identical to Crimsonland's) graphics, since it's quite obvious that this genre is rarely played for the sole reason of gaping at state-of-the-art 3D. Just of the right quality, the pseudo-medieval intro and menu scrolls do come off as slightly bland but are nevertheless quite sleek and professional looking. With all those scorched earth level backdrops, however, one has to wonder why exactly is your character trying to save his world from the demonic hordes anyway. It doesn't look like a very pleasant place to live in.

Sound: (+)
Ominous music resembling a soundtrack from some Diablo clone combined with whooshing spell effects work together to create an atmosphere that's a pleasing fit to Evil Invasion's visual theme. Overall, the sound is not all that memorable but a remarkable level of polish (there's a perfectly fitting sound for each and every event down to the menu clicks) does stand out. If this much attention to detail was paid to all aspects of casual games, a much smaller number of indie developers oriented towards that market would be perplexed by their projects' low download-to-buy ratios.

Gameplay: (+)
The game plays very smoothly - WASD controls allow for some frantic dodging while simultaneously aiming your spells by using the mouse, the targeting system is seamless and never clunky (though your semi-homing magic missiles sometimes do have wacky, unpredictable paths), and the overall feel of the controls is very natural. Shortcuts used to access spells are a welcome feature - you can assign any spell in your toolbar to a custom hotkey or a mouse button - and there is no need to fumble with sub-menu options to accomplish anything during the actual action.

Level maps are slightly larger than the screen size, so there is no way to see all monsters at once. Though staying near the edges of the map to prevent enemies from surrounding you from all sides looks appealing at first, being on the move is always a good idea as the monsters will pour in even from the very edges. Never really knowing when and where they'll spawn (hint: it will probably be at the worst time/place possible), escape spells like Teleport are always good to have in store.

What spoils the gameplay to an extent (but might appeal to people looking for more strategy) are the penalties imposed for not choosing the right skill at a right time. For example, there is no weak "default attack" with no mana cost - even your first weapon (the magic missile) still expends a noticeable amount of mana guaranteeing often waits until it's replenished, rendering your character helpless for a while. This, amongst other skill-related issues, contributes to "templating" or "minmaxing" - stat-tweaking practices used just to achieve an optimal skillset with no regard to the character skillset you really want to play. Sure, in MMORPGs this is used mostly to gain an advantage over other players, but when the need for such methods arises in a single-player game, it's just a sign of poor skill balance.

Value: (-)
The brevity of most robotronesque shooters - including this one - is astounding, especially when you consider the time that must have been spent developing the game mechanics and the art assets compared to the time needed to create a few single-screen shoot-to-kill levels more. Only partially compensated for by the game's incredible difficulty towards the end, the amount (and, of course, the variety) of content is pretty disappointing compared to other recently released genre titles. However, Evil Invasion does have a game premise that can't really fail to entertain. It's just that the entertainment won't last a long while, that's all.

Concept: (-)
Balancing an RPG is never an easy task, and Evil Invasion's character building system is just that - an RPG character sheet. With rather standard top-down shooter mechanics used for combat, the skill customization is handled with unexpected detail (take heed, spaceship shmup designers - what if there was a selection of pilot skills alongside a typical shootem-up weapon upgrade/shop system?), and skillset combinations are quite numerous. Unfortunately, however interesting they might be, not all skillsets are alike.

With an organic monster spawning system where all newly spawned monsters are of the same level as your character, the difficulty is constantly readjusting itself to your character's (but not necessarily your own) skills. There's precious little maneuvering space and no "hey, I'm level 30 now, finally some edge over those pesky mobs!" moments whatsoever. This forces you to optimize your template right from the start or accept a possibility of facing a dead-end later in the game, when you could realize your skills are in discord with your playstyle or simply not up to par with the newly introduced monsters. As there are no "grinding" opportunities between the quest levels, that means it's time to start over.

Fun: (-)
Depending on your love for impossible arcades, you're either in for a lot of fun or destined for immense irritation. The RPG elements are great, and the gameplay is fun enough to be addictive by itself. Sadly, any possible addiction value is mitigated by the lack of replayable content (thankfully, there's some talk about a random mission generator), which makes the game truly fun only if you're good enough to breeze through the quest levels a few times or masochistic enough to replay the same level(s) until you're blue in the face despite the lack of progress.

Overall: (Try)
From a strictly consumer perspective, you could consider Evil Invasion an unofficial sequel to Crimsonland, as the two share much more than a common inspiration. They also feature extremely similar visuals coupled with what essentially amounts to be the same gameplay. In fact, Crimsonland is to Evil Invasion what Restricted Area is to Diablo - two sides of the same medal with their only significant distinction being the game setting. Even if this might sound like a fancy way of saying "rip-off" , if this type of gameplay is what you're into, and your interests lean towards the more traditional fantasy RPG genre (as opposed to Crimsonland's SF atmosphere), this is the game to play.

Be aware, though, that distractions happen. When you take some time off from your all-important quest to perform a few worldly chores, only to return to the same level after a couple of days, much frustration could ensue. The game, due to its spawning system, never gets any easier - it always greets you with the same harshness, possibly forcing you to give up again and come back after an even longer while. Voila - more frustration. Only further enhanced by each subsequent absence from the game, the likelihood of getting stuck on a single level with nothing else to do is quite substantial. And when the sole path to possible new content is opened by succumbing to overwhelming enemy forces over and over again, all while waiting for a single lucky break to get past the problematic spot, the game can quickly become very disheartening. Such is life, though, and the odds are there to beat.