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"I believe it's very important that we ourselves move forward while carefully considering, "What can I do?" or, "What should I do?" for those "precious things".
Koichi Ishii

Ever Oasis is an Action RPG developed by Grezzo after their work on The Legend of Zelda franchise, helmed by Koichi Ishii of Final Fantasy and World of Mana fame. Published by Nintendo and available exclusively on the Nintendo 3DS, it was released on June 23, 2017.

The story concerns the diminutive Plant People called Seedlings, who formed pacts with water spirits to grow oases and live in the unforgiving desert. All is not well however, as they were soon set upon by the evil Chaos, who turned creatures and people it corrupts evil.

At the start of the game, the player is hurled out of their brother's oasis and left to make one themselves. Aiding them in their quest is Esna the water spirit, who may be the last of her kind. Together they must form a flourishing oasis from nothing, invite residents in, and maybe even stop Chaos at its source.


This game provides examples of:

  • Adam and Eve Plot: The start of the game has Tethu, possibly the last seedling able to create an oasis, meeting Esna, the last water spirit. The pair create a new oasis after Chaos destroyed Tethu's brother's oasis. Or, if you play as Tethi, an Eve and Eve plot.
  • All Deserts Have Cacti: Despite being based on Egypt, there are plenty of cacti to go around.
  • Amazing Technicolor Population: While in their default appearances the male version of the protagonist, Tethu, has brown skin and the female one, Tethi, has a lighter shade, part of their customization and other members of the Seedling species have abnormal skin colors such as pink, blue, green, and purple.
  • Amazon Brigade: The Drauk are a Proud Warrior Race that also happens to be all female.
  • Ancient Egypt: The game takes lots of inspiration from Egyptian mythology, from character designs and names to the aesthetics.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Many of the quests you do to level up your townsfolk will reward you with a copy of the clothes that townsperson normally wears. You can also find clothes as a reward for finishing the Labyrinths or for holding festivals.
  • Anthropomorphic Personification: The Seedlings were based around the idea of if seeds were creatures that could move around.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • The Warp Whistle is given to you early, and while you can make one quick-travel point mid-dungeon, most other dungeons or important landmarks will hand you a permanent warp point. It's also marked on the map.
    • As your oasis grows and gets a bigger main street and a back road, you unlock the "Mass Restock" feature so you don't have to run to every single store to restock them one by one. You can also send your non-seedling residents out on supply runs to keep getting the basic items, and they will get quite a lot of them, too!
    • If your character comes across an object that requires a specific weapon to bypass, select it and the character will show you an icon that says what skill is needed to activate the object. Especially helpful since the paraglider, leaf wall, and pellet abilities use flowers.
    • Crossbows require you to shoot things on walls or even on ceilings. Fortunately they have a very generous hitbox and the game will auto-lock onto them whenever you mouse over them. (This also will let you know how close/far you are to the item itself)
  • "Arabian Nights" Days: The main setting of the game.
  • Artifact of Doom: The Black Lumite, the corrupted form of the Red, Blue and Yellow lumite.
  • As Long as There Is Evil: Sheut/Chaos implies this is the case with its eventual return: as long as there are negative emotions (grief, anger, greed, racism), darkness/Chaos will eventually return. Hopefully this will be mitigated since due to Esna's Heroic Sacrifice the desert turned into one large oasis, where no one will have to suffer again.
  • Battle Bolas: Bolas are one of the weapons that Seedlings can use. They have a long range and deal magical damage.
  • Beat the Curse Out of Him: The enemy monsters, when defeated, are not killed, but revert to their pre-Chaos state. Notably averted with Seedlings, Serkah, Drauk, and Lagora who fall to Chaos - it's explicitly stated that this is fatal to them.
  • Big Bad: Sheut, aka Chaos, who currently possesses the main character's older brother Nour.
  • Big Good: Thoth, the Great Sage who protects the world.
  • Big Eater: The Serkah race as a whole. In fact, they're the ones who teach you about the Gourmet Festival that celebrates (and thus increases sales of) food.
  • Bittersweet Ending: You managed to free Nour's soul, and stopped Chaos. The world is becoming green again! Except Esna's dead.
  • Blow You Away: Children of the Great Tree have power over the wind, and for your player character, this takes the form of their "Green Gale" ability.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: Many pieces of lategame equipment are this. Several of them require you to beat the bonus bosses and rare enemies multiple times to get the equipment necessary to make them.
  • Build Like an Egyptian: There are lots of heiroglyphics everywhere and even a giant obelisk.
  • Cain and Abel: Seipha becomes the Cain to Miura's Abel after the former is possessed by Chaos.
  • Can't Catch Up: Will inevitably happen with the fact that just about everyone who moves into your oasis can become playable, and you Can't Drop the Hero, so you can only take two people with you. Fortunately you can send the non-seedlings on supply runs, and doing quests for shopkeepers gives them a free level-up.
  • Can't Drop the Hero: Tethu/Tethi must be in your party at all times, as some of the puzzles would be quite unsolvable without their wind powers.
  • Central Theme: New opportunities come from meeting new people.
  • Changing Gameplay Priorities: As mentioned under Early Game Hell, you can often get more residents in your oasis than you can build shops for them, and the game pulls a Bait-and-switch to you. Once your oasis starts hitting around thirty or so residents, managing your Oasis turns into a Space-Management Game.
  • Can't Drop the Hero: Justified, without the protagonists Rainbow Protection ability, almost every character will die in a single hit to any monster.
  • The Corruption: The land is being overtaken by Chaos, which makes the creatures around much more aggressive.
  • Cosmetic Award: Completing certain achievements in the game will unlock Factum Relics, large states that decorate the front of your oasis. They do nothing but look cool and show off what you've done. To a lesser extent, there are the roads you can craft—some of them require semi-rare materials, but the only purpose they serve is to make your oasis look pretty.
  • Cozy Catastrophe: Your character is essentially building one of the last bastions of civilisation, aside from a few settlements, and Esna is the last of her kind. Fortunately nobody seems to mind - in fact they're quite chipper about the whole thing.
  • Cute Mute: The Noots never speak, and that makes them all the more endearing. A few of the more introvert Seedlings (like Pami and Isa) even like their silence, as it comforts them and makes them easy to do business with.
  • Degraded Boss: Most of the miniboss enemies reappear later on as normal enemies. The very first miniboss you fight, the Razortooth, goes on to be a pretty ordinary encounter in the Kalari Woodsea, for example.
  • Disney Death: Subverted. After Esna's Heroic Sacrifice, the main character goes to her shrine. Briefly, they see her reaching out to them and are overjoyed, thinking she survived... but it turns out to just be a hallucination, and she's actually gone.
  • Doomed Hometown: Five minutes into the game and Chaos infests your brother's oasis, presumably kills the inhabitants, and drives you away.
  • The Dragon: Although he shares just as much screen-time as the other Chaos possessed members, Aronbesh is notably more competent and serious than the Laughably Evil and clumsy Saluru when it comes to trying to eliminate the heroes in the Forgotten Forest. His dedication to Sheut's Evil Plan as shown in his final pre-battle speech definitely gives the impression that out of all of the minions, Aronbesh is Sheut's right-hand man. Near the end of the game, he shares the role with Saluru after Seipha's death, making them Co-Dragons.
  • Dual Wielding: Lagora, the rabbit race, use twin blades in their fights and for cutting through spider-webs.
  • Early Game Hell: At Level 1, any enemy can kill you in one to three hits, forcing you to run away a lot. You're also starved for resources and Dewadems (Which you need to build shops and synthesize items) and you might get residents coming in quicker than you can build shops for them.
  • Endgame+: Beating the final boss puts you just before you explore the final area, but unlocks several new residents, one new festival type, new shops, new challenges, and more.
  • The Evil Genius: Saluru, the Chaos corrupted Serkah, who is revealed to have helped destroy the Ocean Necropolis. Also counts as The Brute due to wielding a hammer in combat.
  • Evil Is Bigger: Chaos monsters are all larger than the playable characters.
  • Eye Patch Of Power: Sheut sports one, turning him in his One-Winged Angel form.
  • Face Death with Dignity: The Quirky Miniboss Squad of corrupted races, when you kill them are perfectly okay with it all.
  • Fatal Flaw: Each of the four races had one in the past. The Seedlings were greedy and argumentative, the Drauk were warlike, the Serkah were greedy and destructive to the environment, and the Lagora were Fantastic Racists.
  • Final-Exam Boss: The Final Boss, of course.
  • Flat Character: Compared to the other races of the game, the Noots serve mostly as generic NPCs who you don't even get any generic dialogue out of. They're just there to increase the profit of your shops.
  • Fling a Light into the Future: When Chaos attacks the last oasis at the beginning of the game, Tethu/Tethi's brother Nour uses his wind magic to launch you into the air, telling you that you have to create a new oasis.
  • Grand Theft Me: Chaos can possess a myriad of creatures, either temporarily or permanently, including Tethu/Tethi's older brother Nour.
  • Happy Rain: At the end of the game, Esna performs a Heroic Sacrifice to turn herself into a raincloud and bring rain to the desert, finally healing the Black Dragon.
  • Hartman Hips: Esna has a remarkable waist-to-hip ratio, probably for the purpose of making her look like a water drop. In her powered-up form, she slims down considerably into looking like a more traditional mermaid. The Drauk tribe also have these, though they're more realistic in comparison.
  • The Heartless: Chaos is the conglomerate form of the anger, greed, sorrow, and wishes of those that died in the desert.
  • Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The male protagonist is named Tethu and the female Tethi by default, though you can name them yourself.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: Naturally, Tethi/Tethu starts off using a sword. However, unlike other Seedlings, he/she can use any of the Seedling weapons (swords, bolas, wands, and bows) so long as you have one. Seedling residents who fall into this trope are Lili, Pami, Sasha, Sabayt, Jasper, Carlotta, Nubit, Gadon and Potipan.
  • "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: The party tries this on the Chaos infused races (Drauk, Serkah and Lagora) but to no avail. This is especially personal for Miura to the Chaos infused Seipha, her younger sister.
  • Invisible to Normals: Only Children of the Great Tree (seedlings who can plant oases) can see water spirits.
  • Item Crafting: Not only does the game offer traditional item crafting at the Synthesis Tree, you can also craft road decorations for your town. As a bonus, almost every single equipment item you can find has a crafting recipe, so finding an item gives you the ability to make more of it.
  • Kill the Host Body: Sapient beings possessed by Chaos can never be freed of it, so the heroes have no choice but to Mercy Kill them.
  • Lampshade Hanging: One of the chaos-possessed trio, who you had encountered early on (but apparently fell to his death) will threaten you and boast about how powerful he is... yet Tethu/Tethi won't remember who he is.
  • Last of His Kind: By the start of the game Esna says she is the last of the Water Spirits.
  • Lilliputians: Judging by the giant pottery, shards, and how a line that Roto might say involves an ancient race that must have been huge when compared to their seedling self, it seems to be implied.
  • Lizard Folk: One of the races in the game's setting. They are called the Drauk, and are tall, female only humanoid lizards.
  • Loyalty Mission: Each Seedling party member has three missions to unlock that tell you their backstory. Each one also unlocks a new skill for them.
  • The Lost Woods: The Forgotten Forest. Given that this is a desert setting, the forest is made up of cacti rather than trees.
  • Made of Evil: Chaos is implied to be this.
  • Marathon Boss: The Final Boss is this, combined with "Get Back Here!" Boss since they are constantly on the move.
  • Meaningful Name: 'Sheut' is an Ancient Egyptian term for a part of the soul called the shadow, which is the mark someone leaves on the world and is needed for living things to exist.
  • Mercy Kill: Being possessed by Chaos is considered a Fate Worse than Death for the intelligent races, since unlike animals, they can't recover from it. Killing Chaos-possessed sentients is considered a kindness, and a few residents will explicitly ask you to go take out a friend of theirs who was Chaos-possessed to put their souls at rest.
  • Mini-Dungeon: Many of the cave areas have mini-dungeon aspects to them, but the most fitting candidate is probably the Sanctuary. Despite having keys, it doesn't have a true boss (just mini boss battles with each member of the Chaos trio) and is MUCH shorter than the other dungeons.
  • Missing Secret: In Horned Cave, the very first area of the game you visit, there's a visibly cracked wall hidden behind some mining spots. It absolutely looks like something you should be able to break... but you can't. The map even proves there's nothing hidden behind it. But it doesn't stop it from looking suspicious...
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: A lot of the monsters in the game are these by looks and/or name. Such as the first monsters you cross paths with, Leapard and Sharkobra, are a rabbit or other rodentlike creature with the spots of a leopard and a cobra with a shark fin respectively. And the Noots are penguins mixed with owls.
  • Mook Maker: The Chest enemies in the labyrinths constantly spawn enemies until they're destroyed. They do tend to wait for you to defeat the thing they spawned before making more, but then they don't even appear at all for you to attack! The Cuttleslug enemy and its variants can also spawn one enemy, a Creeper or a Jackpine, by blowing a ball of sludge out from their trunk.
  • Mundane Utility: Some party member weapons fall into this. The Serkah's hammer is great in combat...and for hitting switches and breaking rocks. The Lagora's twin blades are great for DPS use...and for cutting open spider-webs. The Drauk's spear has a great reach and power...and is also used to open gates and tilting over giant fragments of urns.
  • Nature Spirit: In the form of the water spirit Esna, your ally who helps create your oasis.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Chaos.
  • Non-Mammal Mammaries: Played with - the Drauk don't seem to have any visible mammaries, but some appear to have a Breast Plate or a crop top that makes them look like they have mammaries. This was possibly done to emphasize their female-only race.
  • NPC Boom Village: The oasis starts out barren, so the player has to go out of the world and recruit new party members to live there.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The Serkah have a number of dwarvish traits to them—they love mining, they're stout and food-loving, and their claws even look like beards. And it's even revealed that, long ago, their lust for gold and riches lead to them destroying natural beauty with their mining.
  • One-Gender Race: The Drauk and Serkah races appear to only have female and male members respectively. Female Lagora do exist, but are explicitly stated by Merodac to be rare.
    Merodac: Did you know that most Lagora are male. It's really rare to see a female Lagora! But somehow we've survived.
  • One-Winged Angel: For the final battle, Sheut transforms into a gigantic dragon made of Chaos.
  • Our Mermaids Are Different: Esna is a water spirit who basically looks like a mermaid.
  • Plant Person: The protagonist is a Seedling, a race of plant people.
  • Proud Merchant Race: The Seedlings, who literally have mercantile affairs in their hearts that manifests as magical shops! Seedlings are so sales-happy they run shops even when they don't match up with their other professions, like Carlotta the archaeologist Seedling who sells... balloons.
    Carlotta: I'm an archaeologist, but I'm also a balloon maker. And I take neither of those occupations lightly.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Drauk are an all-female race of proud warrior lizard people. However, they also really like pretty clothes and accessories as well as fashion festivals.
  • Psycho Rangers: The trio of Chaos corrupted races fought:
    • Saluru, the Chaos Serkah, to Levi.
    • Aronbesh, the Chaos Lagora, to Sol.
    • Seipha, the Chaos Drauk, to Miura made worse because Seipha is Miura's lost sister she's been searching for.
  • Randomly Generated Levels: The Labyrinths have a different room layout every time you enter, though the basic layout of the labyrinth itself remains the same.
  • Rare Random Drop: At the end of each Labyrinth, you have a chance to fight a rare enemy, and said rare enemies also have rare drops. You can influence your chance to fight the rare enemies by using more slabs of one species, though.
  • Scarab Power: Khepri the scarab beetle is named after the Egyptian god of rebirth. It carries a ball of water, which allows Esna to communicate with you outside the oasis, and can revive fallen teammates.
  • Scary Scorpions: One of the races in the game are called the Serkah and were inspired by scorpions, but they're nice folk. Monsters that fit this trope include the Scrimpion, which is more of a shrimp-scorpion hybrid.
  • Scenery Porn: Your oasis just becomes absolutely gorgeous as it levels up, especially the Great Tree and Garden areas.
  • Scissors Cuts Rock: Serkah, Lagora, and Drauk use a Rock-Paper-Scissors type system in which their weapon(s) deal extra damage to enemies of certain types, while suffer a damage-per-hit penalty against other enemies. Lagora are able to attack so fast that their damage per second only suffers a little bit when attacking enemies who resist their weapons.
  • Series Mascot: The Noots are pushed as this. They appear in the loading screens, and the character designer even referred to them as "mascot-type" characters.
  • Space-Management Game: At first, it seems like you will eventually get your Oasis to build up to have a shop for literally every seedling and maybe a few who manage the garden for you. However, when your Oasis level starts hitting the late teens, level-ups that increase the amount of space available to you become fewer and farther in between, meaning you will start running out of space to place your shops, especially as they start leveling up and becoming more profitable (thus increasing morale). The player has to keep morale up and a variety of shops open, since villagers will join if you have some shops available.
  • Status Buff: The player character's other special ability is to throw attack, defence, and magic-up onto the party at a time.
  • Status Effects: Poison, Paralyze, Stun, Slow, and Confusion.
  • Super-Deformed: The game uses a chibi art style for the characters.
  • Temple of Doom: The dungeons of the game. A great example would be The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, the Temple of Trials.
  • Terrible Trio: Saluru, Aronbesh, and Seipha serve as Sheut's main minions and do their best to impede your journey. After Seipha is killed, Aronbesh and Saluru get regulated to Those Two Guys.
  • Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Male and female Seedlings are sexually dimorphic. Male Seedlings have woodier, more branchlike horns, female Seedlings have split-down-the-middle horns that resemble seed pods.
  • Tomboy with a Girly Streak: The Drauk are an entire race of girly tomboys. They're a Proud Warrior Race who are constantly training to be stronger, but they also put a lot of emphasis on personal appearance . This makes the Drauk generally fashion-conscious and enjoy pretty clothes and accessories.
  • Verbal Tic: Yamorka, one of the Drauk, makes sure to throw in a "PWAH!" with almost every line she says. PWAH!
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: The default clothes for the male version of the protagonist, though it is somewhat hard to tell due to the chibi art style.
  • Warp Whistle: Aqua Gates, as well as quick travel in your oasis.
  • Wind Is Green: The hero's special ability is presented as a green cyclone.

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