Kamiko (2017)

Kamiko is a short, but sweet action-adventure game with pixel art graphics and a top-down perspective, developed by Japanese indie studio called Skipmore. It was first released for the Nintendo Switch console in April 2017, and later on other platforms including PC and mobile.

Kamiko doesn't have an elaborate story or narrative, but it does have a simple premise that sets the stage for the gameplay. The game takes place in a world where humans and spirits coexist. However, an evil force has taken over the land, and it's up to three priestesses - Yamato, Uzume, and Hinome - to save the world from darkness. Kamiko features several elements from Shintoism, such as the use of torii gates, which are traditional Japanese gates that mark the entrance to a sacred space, and the presence of Shinto shrines.

Do not be mistaken – the focus here is on action, not on the story. Each one of the priestesses has their own unique abilities and weapons, gameplay is mainly composed of fast-paced combat and exploration, with the player needing to defeat enemies and solve puzzles to progress through the levels. There are four gates in each level that are sealed – the main goal in every stage is to release the seals on these gates & proceed to the boss area. Once done, you move to another level and so on, and so forth.

Each Kamiko priestess has a different set of abilities and a different playstyle too: Yamato wields a Blade of Kusanagi – a giant sword which makes her a close range attack expert; Uzume is bestowed with the Magatama of Yasakani, which is essentially a bow & arrow, making her a great long distance attacker, that shoots in-between her dashes & Hinome - most interesting out of the three in my opinion – uses a shield, called Mirror of Yata, which she can throw at enemies as a boomerang-like weapon. She also holds a dagger, allowing short-range attacks. Gameplay is balanced rather well and you can indeed feel the difference in pace and style between the three priestesses. Apart from having your standard HP meter, game also gives you something called SP meter, points for which you earn from defeating constantly respawning enemies – killing multiple enemies in a row adds to your combo. The higher your combo is, the more SP you will obtain. You can then use SP to open treasure chests, unlock the “gates between worlds” and perform special attacks.

One of the main themes in the game is the power of nature and the importance of balance. The priestesses are tasked with protecting the land and its spirits from an evil force, and their abilities and weapons are often based on natural elements such as fire, water, and earth - highlighting the connection between humans and nature. The game also features various creatures and spirits, many of which are based on Japanese mythology and folklore.

It is a short game that will probably take about an hour, maybe an hour and a half to complete, especially if you're used to this genre, newcomers will probably take slightly longer. Each consecutive playthrough with another priestess will be much shorter. The game has a tight gameplay, pleasant soundtrack, charming visuals and low price point, but it’s really short and the only replay value here is in beating your times on previously completed levels. Bosses are relatively easy to defeat too, in fact there's hardly any challenge in the game apart from the section at the end.

This one is very close to two stars, sort of verging on the edge really... I have to say that I had fun with it, although it’s not a great game by any means and the final part where you have to carry an item and avoid hordes of enemies while doing it is infuriating, to say the least (you are doing it throughout the game very often, but it's the end section that's stupidly hard in this regard). Luckily I managed to beat it without wasting too much time on it, but it seemed like such a strange design choice for a title, that is otherwise, mechanically solid. And most of the time while playing it I couldn’t really shake off “A Link to the Past” vibe, which is always a good thing I suppose. It is a completely different game, so bear that it mind, but it’s just a feeling that I had. At low price, this is a title worth checking out but only if you're into that sort of gameplay.

One of those early Switch days success story, Kamiko came out less than two months after the launch of the Switch, right around the time where a bunch of early adopters where finishing Breath of the Wild and looking for anything, and I mean ANYTHING, to play on their new favorite console. Couple that with generally positive reviews, comparisons to 2D Zelda, and a fairly low eShop price and you had a recipe for instant indie success.

For some reason, I can’t remember why, I did not play it at the time, even though I found myself in the very situation described above, having bought my Switch and Breath of the Wild at a midnight launch. Anyway, I’ve been in the mood for some Zelda-like action and I decided to finally take a crack at Kamiko. It’s a very, very short game. I finished in 1h09 minutes according to the end credits and about 15 of those were spent on one very poorly devised puzzle at the end that revolves around bringing a key to a door without getting hit once, while enemies respawn randomly on your way there. Besides that particular stretch, the game is mostly well designed, asides from some redundancies and the aforementioned enemy spawning choice, which remains a burden for most of the game. It has nice pixel art and satisfying sound design and cool visual touches like the zooming in when something is unlocked.

It has 4 levels, which are somewhat designed like a classic Zelda dungeon, but it reminds me of the arcade days where developers sometimes tried to cram console or PC game design into an arcade setting, like Wonder Boy in Monster Land.

All in all, I would recommend it, even more so if it’s on sale as it’s very short although there are three different characters to choose from who all have a different play-style, so that could get you replaying it several times.

Fun little game, I’m interested in the devs recent game Transiruby, which is a Metroidvania.

I heard good things about Kamiko, and I tend to like nice bite-size games. The gameplay is fine, albeit a bit repetitive. It could stand to be a little more challenging. It seems like the devs tried to make a hack-n-slash bullet hell hybrid, but I think we need a new genre label for Kamiko: bullet purgatory. Rather than punishing, the boss fights are simply not very exciting and you’re really never at risk of getting hit by anything.

I came close to giving this three stars, because as a short game I almost enjoyed it. But then I spent the last quarter of my entire time playing trying to run one key to one final door and failing. This process took me longer than some entire levels including the boss fight. Why did I repeatedly fail? Because if you take even one hit while carrying a key you have to start over. Avoiding enemies really isn’t hard at all, but when enemies randomly spawn directly on top of you during this process it makes it very hard to complete. And wonderfully, they don’t spawn in a pattern, so I lost the key over and over until I almost abandoned the game. I didn’t, I managed to finally deliver the key and then fight the final boss. A boss that is incidentally so easy you wonder what was the point of playing the game at all.

At least the game has some nice pixel art.

After the grand undertaking that was Breath of the Wild, I found myself craving a focused bite-sized experience and Kamiko fit the bill nicely. This cute pixelated indie title offers four stages that play like a series of simple 2D Zelda dungeons. Each stage has the same objective: Find and activate 4 spirit gates in order to gain access to the boss room; accomplishing this task involves navigating branching corridors, clearing enemy kill rooms and solving light puzzles (i.e. finding keys and flipping switches). I finished my first play-through in an hour and sixteen minutes, which for the asking price of $5 (US), is perfectly fine by me. You may have noticed I specified first play-through; this is because a major emphasis of the game is replayability. There are three different characters to choose from at the beginning of the game (a swordswoman, an archer, and a boomerang-user), and because the gameplay is so light and snappy, I ended up replaying the game with all three. Each character played differently enough to change the way I approached combat, even though the level layout and enemy distribution are the same regardless of the character being used. That being said, it would have been nice to see each character's move set expand or weapons upgrade during the quest, but in this case, you finish the game with the same gear and abilities that you start with. There are, however, expansions to the HP and MP meters that can be obtained, but these aren't as fun as some new moves would be.

There are two gameplay mechanics in Kamiko that could be sticking points for some players: enemy respawn rates and carrying keys. In true NES-era fashion, enemies in Kamiko repopulate a room as soon as you leave it. Thus, you can clear a kill room, advance to the next room and immediately re-enter the kill room to find that the enemies have already respawned. Part of why this occurs is that opening treasure chests, activating spirit gates, and using charge attacks all consume MP and the only way replenish it is to kill more enemies. Thus the respawning is necessary to prevent you from getting stuck, but the respawn rate does seem to be a bit excessive. The respawn rate closely ties into the key carrying mechanic. When the protagonist is carrying a key to a door, she is incapable of using her weapon and if she gets hit, the key returns to the chest that it came from. In most cases, the distance that the key needs to be transported is relatively short, but some enemies will inevitably respawn in your path, thus if you're not good at planning your route and dodging enemies, you may have to go back for the key several times. In the last stage, this does get somewhat tricky as there may be several obstacles and rooms between the key and its associated door. For me, I quickly developed a knack for mowing down waves of enemies when armed and sneaking around them when carrying a key, so I found these mechanics to be more challenging than frustrating, but I could see how some players could get discouraged.

From an aesthetic perspective, I found the colorful 8-bit graphics to be very charming and the music to be very catchy in a classic retro game sort of way. Kamiko has an extremely limited story, but for a game like this, I have little interest in watching long cutscenes or reading lengthy dialog anyway.

Overall, I think those looking for a quick action/adventure game will be very satisfied with their $5 purchase. The extra characters and speed-running potential provide nice incentives to come back to Kamiko after blasting through it the first time. However, those that get frustrated easily with old-school mechanics or are looking for something with significant depth may end up not seeing the appeal of this game. After playing though Kamiko, I'd definitely like to see a longer, more robust adventure from this developer in the future.

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Rating: 7/10

You can play as 3 different characters who have different fighting styles, and you go through four levels that do a decent job of offering some variety without outright astounding us. You solve little puzzles here and there, but the bulk of them is carrying either an orb or a key to a certain spot without getting hit by enemies, who spawn constantly.

Sometimes enemies spawn right in front of you which is a little annoying, specifically when you're trying to carry something. Since you can't drop the item without it returning to where you got it, this can be a little frustrating.

Kamiko is incredibly short. My first playthrough was a little over an hour, and there isn't a lot of replay value. You can play as those different characters but since the levels don't change it is a little repetitive. Luckily the game is under 10 dollars, so it's not that big of an issue, and to its credit, the way in which the characters control is diverse enough to remain somewhat interesting.

The rest of the game is solid. The pixel art is gorgeous if you like this kind of thing, the action is simplistic, yet fluid and satisfying, and the music does a good job of setting the mood. The boss battles are not incredibly difficult not easy either. It's quick to figure them out, but the developers gave us entertaining and different challenges to overcome.

Ultimately this is another solid addition to the Switch library. The price is at a good spot, and the portable nature of the Switch gives legs to a title that may not necessarily get attention otherwise.

“No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly…and any art worth learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it.” ― Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji

Beneath the automotive bluster and colorful attraction of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, a little game called Kamiko stepped silently into the Nintendo Switch eShop. Released by publisher CIRCLE Entertainment and developer Skipmore, Kamiko is an indie action-puzzle game in the style of an arcade top-down hack ‘n slash inspired by Shinto theology. If that sounds complicated, rest assured. It’s not.

What you get for an affordable $4.99 is essentially a short exercise in speedrunning with simple action gameplay. Its substance is limited but it is nonetheless enjoyable and manages to capture some of the addictiveness of old arcade games, perfect for Nintendo’s console/handheld hybrid. This game seems to lend itself to short train rides, carpooling, or lunch breaks since there are numerous save points and only four stages, emphasizing the fastest possible completion and beating your previous time.

Kamiko features three playable characters: Yamato, Uzume, and Hinome, referred to as children of the transient world. These are, in other worlds, ordinary human girls, shrine maidens (miko in Japanese). At the shrine where they serve, a deity instructs them that they are to be summoned to the realm of the dead (yomi, the world of darkness).

It seems that the gates connecting the profane transient world to the sacred afterlife have been sealed by demons (it’s hard to make out because the translation is atrocious). The miko shrine maidens are gifted by heaven with ancient relics, the Imperial Regalia, to become “Kamiko”. Equipped with their new weapons and the assurance that they each have special power within themselves, their goal is to cleanse the gates separating the secular world from the afterlife and defeat the demons plaguing the realm.

The varied fighting styles of the three girls helps mix up the action between playthroughs and lengthen the game’s shelf life. Yamato brandishes a huge sword and is thus a close-ranged fighter. Uzume carries a bow and set of arrows to attack from a distance. Hinome melds the style of the two girls before her with a throwable weapon and short-range dagger. It’s easy enough to beat the game in under an hour so with three individual shrine maidens you’ve got close to three hours of play.

As mentioned, there are four stages: the Forest of Awakening, the Sunken Relics, the Scorching Labyrinth, and the Ruins of Yamataikoku. The objective is to cleanse four Japanese gates (Torii) in each stage in order to open up the path to a boss fight. You do this by first locating the gates, which are often blocked by simple puzzles and enemies, and then spending a portion of SP to cleanse them one by one. SP, also used for special attacks, is recharged by defeating enemies in quick succession to rack up combos. Max SP (and max HP) can be gained through the course of game.

This game would definitely have benefited from being a roguelike title. The stages do not change so the puzzles and locations of items like keys and artifacts remain the same in every playthrough. Yeah the goal is to complete the levels you’ve become familiar with faster but when even enemy spawning points don’t change much, you’ll probably soon find new experiences to enjoy rather than running the same gamut over and over and over again.

Click here for the full review... https://thewellredmage.wordpress.com/2017/04/30/kamiko/