The game was published in October 2000 in Russia and CIS (Russian version) and a few months later in English.
The game's story consists of a man called Zak who finds himself at a base of ruin in an unknown land called Gipath. After he wakes up, Zak finds a group of people praying and as they spot him, they run off and alert a nearby village shouting, "The chosen one has come!" Zak soon finds this village and the people who live in it. While inside the village the village Elder, named "Silver Tongue", briefs Zak on how they believe he is this chosen one and how he has come to save their village from Goblins and other such threats that roam the land. Soon after he has done these Quests, he finds a plot about a traitor who plans on killing him. And the story also unfolds even more over three different lands, and how he wants to regain his lost memory over the course of the game's story.
Evil Islands also has an online muliplayer feature allowing you and other people to do quests, level up and generally do the things you do on the single player side of the game but with human players. Quests are different from those of the single player story and have different objectives and rewards. The multiplayer portion of the game is also much harder than normal play especially without other players, encouraging people to group up. Multiplayer gaming at the time when the game was released was still fairly new, making Evil Islands stand out from other roleplay games for its time.
The game has a stand-alone expansion, Evil Islands: Lost in Astral, which was released only in Russia.
This game contains examples of:
- Always Accurate Attack: All offensive magic works that way (though it doesn't necessarily have to deal damage). That's why most enemies wielding it have less health than other monsters in the area. It's also the reason why Kharad's spear is so powerful.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You can't have more than two allies at a time, although Lazy Backup is avoided and you can just pick another one if one of them is killed.
- A Winner Is You: You see the Curse fall to the ground and bleed out to death... Cue credits.
- Back Stab: Backstab does extra damage but does not guarantee a kill. If you're attacking a strong enemy, you must be sure to aim for the head if possible to perform maximum damage. You can also spend your EXP points on backstab upgrades that further increase damage when attacking from behind (Zak starts with level 1 upgrade).
- Beef Gate: A few throughout the game, worth noting a couple of dragons in Gipath and an Imperial Guard in Suslanger.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: Zak falls into the Anti-Hero trope, and while the Khadaganian empire is undoubtedly evil, the Canian empire is not much better.
- Can't Drop the Hero: Zak can't be dropped no matter what.
- Cast from Stamina: The game combined the Sprint Meter with the Mana Meter: it was depleted by either spellcasting or running, and it only replenished when the character was motionless.
- Crapsack World: First, an After the End environment (Gipath) with ruins everywhere and people living in Stone Age. Second, an empire (Ingos) governed by The Caligula, and where just leaving the city means you'll get ruthlessly shot either by rioting villagers, the incredibly powerful gang of local thieves or the Private Army under orders from the local merchant. Finally, an empire (Suslanger) with basically no freedom, soldiers everywhere, and with legal slavery.
- Critical Encumbrance Failure: There's a maximum of weight you can carry before you're unable to run, although you can increase the limit with a skill.
- Cthulhumanoid: The Wormheads are humanoid creatures resembling the Mind Flayers from Dungeons & Dragons, who dwell in underground caves and are stated to despise all surface inhabitants. They wield lightning magic, and they can buff themselves with Haste.
- Damage-Sponge Boss: One of the two types of "bosses" in the game. A few examples include the Ogre Brothers, the White Wolf and a fair share of lone dragons, cyclops or ogres.
- Dem Bones: The skeletons from the Dead City.
- Distressed Dude: Zak gets captured twice by the Khadaganians, and must be rescued (first by the Hermit Lizard, later by the Odalisque).
- Dungeon Bypass: Can be done a couple of times, although you still want to complete all quests because of the experience bonus. (Especially since the game's extremely steep level and equipment curve means that almost any area you're not supposed to be is going to be a solid Beef Gate wall extending forever.)
- Instead of doing the long set of quests related to entering the Dead City, you could just traverse the cave that is available very early in the game. The other entrance leaves you about ten metres far from your objective in the Dead City.
- If you don't want to avoid all of those quests, you can still shorten them. Getting to the observatory is far easier than the game tells you. Instead of making peace with the Lizard Men living in the Middle Mountains, you can just lure the ones near the dragon to kill them elsewhere, and then just sneak the dragon. Similarly, you can avoid the quest for freezing the lake by taking a side path that goes around the lake. There are some Lizard Men there, but you should have killed many of them already by that point, and they're anyway weaker than the skeletons you're forced to fight to get the crystal required to freeze the lake.
- Elemental Crafting: The game has cloth, leather, hide and fur for armor, stone and bone for weapons, and metal and diamond for both. Wood is strangely absent.
- Elemental Embodiment: There are three types of elementals: stone, lava and snow, representing earth, fire and ice. The first can be looted for large quantities of stone material (although it's of little use other than selling, since plain stone is one of the worst materials for making weapons), while the other two can be looted for crystals which are more valuable.
- Elemental Tiers: Zigzagged, even though it seems the designers wanted to play this trope straight. Fire magic is rendered obsolete because of this trope, but it's averted with acid magic, and lightning magic is the ultimate magic instead, despite coming at the middle of the game (check the Last Disc Magic entry for more info, but to be short, some reasons are lightning magic doing extra damage against enemies wearing metal armor, and high mana cost and magic requirement on acid magic combined with a low range of attack).
- The Empire: The Khadaganian empire.
- Equipment-Based Progression: The game features this to some degree, thanks to its emphasis on Item Crafting (with the pseudo level-up only increasing Hit Points and Mana Points, and purchasable skills only affecting secondary stats such as chance to hit or attack speed), but especially with physical damage. There's no way at all to increase the damage inflicted through weapons by earning experience, you must equip a better weapon for that. This is notable because experience points can be spent on skills such as increased night vision or maximum equipable weight, so you'd expect something as important as damage would be affected by experience. Also present in regards to armor points (can only be increased by equipping better armor) and magical damage (can only be increased by equipping better spells available through Spell Crafting, experience only affects, indirectly, whether you're actually able to use them, but once crafted and equipped, the spell's damage can't be increased).
- The Evil Army: The Khadaganian army definitely falls here.
- Fallen Angel: The Curse sure has an appearance of one.
- Fantasy Metals: As opposed to the mundane metals which are available in Ingos, the matals available in Suslanger are magical in nature. They are, in order of strength, mithril (which has a very low weight for a metal, making it very useful for equipping mages), adamantite and meteorite.
- Fierce Unicorn: Unicorns are probably the most dangerous regular enemies in Ingos. Tamed by the Woodsfolk, they viciously defend their masters by casting very powerful lightnings.
- Fishing for Mooks: This is the purpose of the Fireworks spell. It creates small purple fireworks that attract the closest enemy, and only it. You can spam it to lure it far from the other enemies. Considering that most of the time you encounter mooks that are too strong to be killed in groups, and there's no good way for Level Grinding, it's one of the most useful spells in the game.
- Flunky Boss: The other type of "bosses" in this game.
- Erfar takes it to its logical extreme, Zerg Rushing you with at least fifteen Mooks who you will likely two-shot by then (the boss himself included).
- A less serious and way more dangerous example would be Bandit Chief's Lieutenant. Encountered fairly early in the game he has an assortment of six to eight bandits that will come to his aid once engaged. It's possible to pick them off one by one before the main fight though, otherwise you're in for a slugfest.
- Giant Enemy Crab: The Armadillos in Gipath, despite their name, resemble more giant crabs, although with less legs and more teeth.
- Giant Spiders: The Haunt Spiders in Suslanger. Although most of them are wild, the ones in the Death Canyon have been tamed by the Khadaganians and trained to hunt prisoners.
- Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: 99% of male humanoids on all three islands are warriors with close-range weapons, while 99% of all female humanoids are archers or mages. The exceptions can be counted on the fingers of two hands. They are Zak (depending on the player, since he is the Player Character), Rint the Archer, Tka-Rik, Rinas, the army scout leader, Fairakh, the two male necromancers and Sakhilia.
- Harping on About Harpies: The three varieties of harpies (red, stony and green) are winged, somewhat female-looking humanoids who wield elemental magic (fire for red harpies, lightning for stony harpies, and acid for green harpies). Despite being winged, they seldom use it to their advantage, with only the ones encountered in the Gipath observatory attacking from a height.
- Heel–Face Turn: Kharad used to be a part of Khadaganian Army before defecting to La Résistance.
- Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Zak always takes off whatever helmet or hat he is wearing when he speaks to an NPC. Other characters, however, don't do that.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Right after arriving in Suslanger, Zak is captured by the Khadaganians and forced to cross the Death Canyon while attacked by young recruits who hunt prisoners as part of their training.
- Improbable Power Discrepancy: Mostly played straight, with a few aversions. The different types of Underground Monkey have completely different health depending of the island you are, and the giant spiders you fight in the Death Canyon (that you're forced to complete while alone and with obsolete equipment) are strangely weak compared to the ones you fight elsewhere in Suslanger. However, in Suslanger you encounter hyenas which have about the same power as the dogs you encountered in Ingos. This actually has some logic, but makes hyenas look pathetic when compared to the rest of enemies in Suslanger.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chest: Averted. The few treasure chests that you find usually have some kind of background that you can check by accessing the quest menu.
- Infinite Stock For Sale: Averted. Shops have limited quantities of items (randomly generated after you complete a mission, meaning they do restock after a while), indicated by a quantity number on the shop screen, and if you change your mind after selling them something, you can buy it back... provided you have enough extra cash to meet their higher sell price.
- Infinity +1 Sword: An equipment made of diamond. An odd case since you don't really need to work for them as Tka-Rik hands them to you on a silver platter, for free, just before the final battle.
- Item Crafting: Exaggerated in this game, as you have to craft even spells. Also, disassemble a suit of armor and then assemble the metal into a sword and a helmet.
- La Résistance: The Brotherhood of the Last Sanctuary.
- Last Disc Magic: Completely averted. The best offensive magic is not acid, the Suslanger magic, but lightning, which is already available in Ingos, and there's even a way to craft a Lightning spell in Gipath, although it will be very expensive. Concerning non-offensive magic, the high price, required skill and stamina cost and the low duration of Suslanger's spells makes most of them useless, while the game's most useful spells are already available in the previous islands. To drive the point home, The Curse uses lightning in its attacks.
- Lizard Folk: The most dangerous regular enemies in Gipath, they come in three tribes (forest, mountain and lake). They're usually hostile to humans (except when around a pedestal with a giant shell, due to an ancient tradition). Besides packing a strong punch and taking some hits, they're able to tame dragons to do their bidding (thus creating a few Beef Gates in Gipath).
- Lord British Postulate: Many monsters were designed as unkillable by giving them tons of HP and rapid regeneration. However, with the introduction of easy mode in a patch, most of them became technically possible to kill, even though the process was long, difficult, and involved a share of luck. Enthusiasts posted a detailed guide to killing every single creature outside of towns, except two dragons that are too tough to kill even this way and a frog in the tutorial, which only survives because the player has no ranged weapons at this point. This slaughter, nicknamed "Project Genocide", completely breaks the game scripts, making quests play in the wrong order, NPCs making references to future events, and corpses and empty spaces participating in conversations.
- Luke Nounverber: Everyone and their mother is named like that in Gipath. Examples include Erfar Silvertongue, Gort Skullcrusher and Babur Tightfist to name a few. Hilariously, a handful of non-human NPC's such as Goblin Chieftain Gogo averts this. It's also averted in Ingos and Suslanger.
- Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest: Early on, there's a quest that involves killing 7 goblins as a punishment for their intrusions.
- Money Spider: Mostly averted, as slain beasts can only be looted for body parts, and only humanoid enemies drop money or items. Played straight with unicorns and Woodsfolk, who, for some reason, drop bars of iron.
- Multiplayer Difficulty Spike: The game doesn't allow importing your SP characters to co-op (so you have to make new ones from scratch), makes all enemies a lot tougher than in SP, and drastically reduces the XP and money rewards for quests and combat.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Enemies never run out of stamina needed to run (no pun intended) and cast spells. Thus even a frigging troll (an ugly, pimply, lumbering bulk—you know the kind) can always outrun the player.
- Necromancer: The Khadaganian empire employs many of them, as seen in Suslanger. They have risen many zombies and ghouls to serve as their mooks, and at one point it's shown that they're able to Interrogating the Dead as well.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: Erfar told Zak how to get to the portal, which eventually helped Zak return to Gipath.
- No Hero Discount: Lampshaded and justified.
- In one instance, your base of operations is a village where you are praised as the "Chosen One", but the village merchant is so infamously stingy that he explicitly warns you right away that he will still charge you with all your purchases. Later, all the village money happens to be stolen and he once again clearly refuses to supply the village guards with weapons for free... because they didn't stand for him against brigands.
- Another time you join some rebels and obtain all the gear from their blacksmith. He actually apologizes for his shameless prices and explains that he has to smuggle the weapons and bribe the officials of the Evil Empire.
- However, at the very end of the game, it's subverted; the very last 'merchant' you meet before the final battle will give you anything he has in stock and perform all services for free, since everything he's done and collected was for the sole purpose of winning the upcoming battle anyway.
- Non-Combat EXP: The game gives you experience points for each completed quest. Note that you only need to do the quest rather than return to the quest-giver to gain exp.
- Oculothorax: The three varieties of Evileyes (regular, red and green) are big, floating eyes that shoot powerful fireballs at you.
- Our Banshees Are Louder: Strangely, banshees in this game look nothing like the usual, instead looking more like The Grim Reaper. They're portrayed as a tall, somewhat skeletal, specter in a white hooded robe wielding either a Sinister Scythe or a focusing crystal to cast lightnings.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Goblins in this game are small, brown humanoids, armed with spears or slings, who speak in a You No Take Candle manner. They're pretty much The Goombas of the game, being the weakest intelligent enemies in the game (although they're somehow able to pose a threat to the human village, probably by outnumbering the villagers).
- Our Ogres Are Hungrier: They're big, fat humanoids who early on in Gipath pose a big threat due to a large health combined with a high regeneration rate, as well as a strong punch. Later, as Zak gets access to better weapons and armor, the player is able to strong-enough blows to get past the high regeneration rate, as well as withstand better the ogre's hits, so their role as "extremely strong enemies that the player should avoid" passes instead to trolls. Much later, there are sand ogres in Suslanger who are pretty much the same, and they should be killed for the meteorite they drop, as they're an easy source once the player has decent gear.
- Our Orcs Are Different: This game has gray-skinned "revisionist" orcs (and dimorphic as hell). They are grouped in several clans, with a bad relationship among them. Women are always found as archers, while men can be found as either warriors or mages (who wield fire magic and buff themselves and their allies with Strengthen).
- Our Trolls Are Different: Trolls in this game are giants with scaly skin that rapidly heal from any injury due to their high regeneration rate, which means killing them requires either a powerful backstab or a strong, consistent offense. There are three variants (green, blue and black), black trolls being notable for being even slower than the other variants (in fact, they're the slowest enemy in the game).
- Our Zombies Are Different: They come in two flavors: normal, lumbering ones (including recruits, warriors and experienced ones) and better preserved ghouls that for all intents and purposes behave like human enemies.
- Panthera Awesome: Tigers appear on both of the two first islands.
- Pelts of the Barbarian: Everyone in Gipath (both allies and enemies) wear fur and leather clothes and armor, as opposed to the more civilized inhabitants of Ingos and Suslanger, who wear either more refined silk clothes or metal armor.
- Point-and-Click Map: The game features multiple locations connected only via travel points. Accessing them summons the world map, where you can choose to travel either to the adjacent area's travel points or any area you have previously unlocked by completing quests there.
- Real-Time with Pause: The game has three speeds, including Pause. No control is lost in the paused state.
- Regenerating Mana: Staying still restores magic. To be more precise, there is no separate Mana Meter; instead, both running and casting magic use the same resource, stamina.
- Resources Management Gameplay: Very important. You'll want to grind as much as possible, not only to gain experience, but to earn money, since Money for Nothing is completely averted in this game. Besides, the best materials in each island are not available in shops and you'll only be able to get a few from enemies.
- Hard leather (the best leather in the game) is mainly acquired from the Lizard Men (also from Ogres, but there are few of them). You can stock it without too much difficulty, as you'll fight lots of Lizard Men in Gipath. However, although you can craft stronger leather armor in Ingos and Suslanger, you can't get hard leather anymore, meaning you can only use whatever you saved from Gipath.
- Strangely, the opposite situation to the one just above happens with fur: you can get lots of snow tiger skin in Ingos, but there is no new fur armor, so you can only upgrade the one you saved from Gipath.
- Zig-Zagged with hide, as the best one, red dragon hide, can't be acquired by killing red dragons (they drop red dragon bones instead), but by buying it in Suslanger. Before that, however, there's only troll hide, acquired from trolls, who are seldom encountered, and buyable only in Ingos.
- Obsidian, the best type of stone, can only be acquired from elite Orcs (standard Orcs drop just flint, although you can't buy it either).
- The best type of bone you'll be using is shell bones, acquired only from Armadillos. There's one type below (hard bone, acquired from skeletons) and several above (several types of dragon bones; in Gipath they're only acquired as a quest reward, making them Too Awesome to Use, and in Suslanger they're made obsolete by metal).
- The best metal in Ingos is steel, acquired from both the Woodsfolk and Wormheads, so you'll be able to get lots of it. However, Meteorite, the best metal ever, is mainly acquired from Black Wormheads and Imperial Guards (also from Desert Ogres, but again, they are seldom encountered); the first ones can't be encountered after you complete the Wormheads' Cave, and the others are the toughest regular enemies in the entire game, so good luck getting some Meteorite.
- Rock Monster: Stone Elementals, and Golems (the latter are made either of steel or diamond).
- Shock and Awe: Kharad carries an unique spear that throws lightning bolts towards his opponents.
- Shop Fodder: Most non-human enemies can only be looted for body parts or accessories, rather than money, materials or usable items. However, each type is given a short lore description that explains why it is sellable and what the buyers would do with it. Rat tails, for example, make for a decent beer snack, when salted; fire crystals from elementals are turned into lamps and heaters, and banshee cloaks are believed to ward off evil spirits.
- So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: Make sure you've taken all the equipment you want from your party members before moving to the next island! Also, since the last mission on an island yields the most XP, which is shared among the party, you might want to ensure that your companions do not survive the last mission at all.
- Some Call Me "Tim": Tka-Rik.Tka Rik (Tka-Lithan Richti-Nik): My name would sound to you like Tka-a-Litan Rich-ty-a-Nik. An impatient person like you would probably find it somewhat long, so you may call me simply Tka-Rik.
- Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Subverted and later played painfully straight. You start with nothing but a bronze knife - which you will hold on through most of the first act since you've landed in a Stone Age world. Near the end, when you'll have to face the final boss you will be able to buy best weapons and armor for free.
- Spell Crafting: You must craft spells before you use them, using a keystone and then adding runes to increase the attributes (damage, range, duration...) of the base spell.
- Sprint Meter: The game combined the Sprint Meter with the Mana Meter: it was depleted by either spellcasting or running, and it only replenished when the character was motionless.
- Stronger with Age:
- Many enemies have variations which differ only in size and statistics: enemies described as "young" are smaller and weaker, "old" are the biggest and strongest, and "adult" fall in the middle.
- This is the key trait of the Old Dragon. He has grown so strong over the ages that there are no longer any worthy opponents for him on the allod.
- Subsystem Damage: Most enemies have several parts that can be targeted, usually body, head, arms and legs (some enemies lack some of these parts, however). Damaging arms affects attacking speed, damaging legs affects moving speed, and having the body or the head depleted of hit points means instant death. Although it's usually harder to aim for a specific part, doing a backstab gives you more chances to hit, which proves invaluable against enemies who are too strong to be killed otherwise.
- Thunderbolt Iron: Meteorite is the strongest metal available for crafting weapons.
- Tomato in the Mirror: It's eventually revealed that Zak's identity is that of the mysterious Joon you've been looking for during the Suslanger arc.
- The Unchosen One: Zak, in an odd case. He is originally hailed by the villagers as The Chosen One by sheer coincidence, and most energetically by the village elder — but then it turns out that the prophecy is more or less a scam, the village elder is actually a spy for The Empire, sent there in search of a fallen meteorite. Naturally, he becomes a hero anyway.
- Underground Monkey: You'll find several types of wolves, boars, toads, tigers, trolls... that look the same except for color or size.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: At one point in Suslanger you're required to sneak into city choke full of guards and ordinary city folk. Normally killing non-aggressive NPC's such as deer, rabbits or workers yields very low rewards. Here, however, townsfolk drop amounts of gold that can make you reconsider going on a city-wide killer spree... that is, if you don't get caught.
- Video Game Stealing: Animal/monster corpses can be looted for valuable body parts. The same parts can be stolen from their owners if you manage to sneak up to them from behind.
- Warp Whistle: Completing some quests will allow to travel instantly to certain areas of the map.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: Zak is the only one who's required to survive at any time.
- Will-o'-the-Wisp: Willow-o'the-Wisps are enemies that appear in the first island (especially around the swamp areas and around the City of the Dead) as a group of lights that start burning when attacking. They throw fire at you, an attack which isn't very damaging at later stages, but makes them quite a threat when first encountered.
- With This Herring: The game plays this straight for most of the game by coming up with various explanations for No Hero Discount; however, at the very end, it's averted - the "merchant" you meet immediately before the final boss is a powerful wizard and the last other member of your race, who has been devoting his entire life to preparing for a fight with the final boss. Naturally, he gives you everything he has (which includes the materials for all endgame gear) and performs all services for free in order to prepare you for the last confrontation.
- Zero-Effort Boss: The Curse can kill you easily, but it's focused on Tka-Rik who does all the fighting for you. All you need to do is to weaken it and watch the incoming ownage.