Okay, hear me out.

This is not a game you have heard of, and I am not sure I could, in good conscience, tell you that this is a good game. It lacks editing and layout and art and all sorts of things people come to expect in an RPG, even an “indie” game.

What this game has is a good story.

Everyverse was the homegrown RPG of a man named Dennis Parizek, who lovingly crafted this universal game engine and ran it for his wife and friends and pitched it at conventions and everything a guy who dreamed of being an RPG designer might do.

Then he died of cancer. His wife, Debra, decided to do a Kickstarter in hopes of getting people to back the game, get it published, and posthumously achieve her husband’s dream of being a game designer. Which I, being a fan of this kind of romantic story, backed all the way. You can find the game on DriveThruRPG still, along with the two sourcebooks, Paranormality and Future History.

There is actually a lot I like about this game. For one thing, I love the way that the somewhat typical attributes are differentiated into small subcategories. For example, there are dexterous people, but is that small motor skills or large motor skills? Is your intellect based on reasoning, intuition, or creativity? There is this almost “factor tree” of stat creation that really lets you get a granular sense of your character.

The game also uses standard deviation for determining random outcomes, which is why I thought of it when the concept of “smartest game” came up, because if you are using algebra in an RPG, you have to be a little brainy.

So seriously, buy the game, get Debra the residuals, and continue to promote the idea that her late husband’s dreams really did come true.