Evets is a relatively rare roguelike game that has several unusual features like controlling a party of characters instead of a solo character, and group of monsters instead of single monsters. Apart of this and the slightly unusual menu-based user interface, the game is a quite typical traditional.
The game starts at the main menu, where you’ll first have to assemble a party. You can create character by choosing a race (six races available), a class (one of four classes, but there are four more classes in the game) and an alignment (D&D like, plus an “Amoral” alignment) and then distributing some points on some class-determined stats. Each character is already quite well equipped, so you can immediately start exploring the dungeons, but you can also spend some money buying better stuff.
The dungeons appear in usual roguelike manner—top-down view in ASCII graphics. You move through rooms and corridors, occasionally meeting groups of monsters which results in a turn-based combat.
During combat, you have the possibilities to fight, cast a spell, use an item, parry or run. You may stumble upon several groups of monsters at once, like 4 skeletons and 2 gromes, in which case you’ll have to choose whom to attack first, which gives the combat a tactical touch. When you won a fight, you get experience and gold.
The dungeons also feature some special locations like traps, shops and a review board, the latter revealing another specialty of Evets, which is switching character classes during the game.
Despite its unusual and promising features, the game has a quite cumbersome and non-standard interface which makes it difficult to handle. For example, spells you want to cast have to be entered by full name, which is somewhat cumbersome as some spell’s name have been abbreviated (“Magic missle”), but at least, the last entered spell is the default.
