Armikrog (2015)

When I was a little girl, The Neverhood was, and still is, one of my all time favorite games, to the point where I even found a way to play it still on Windows 10 this past year. With that in mind, I was ecstatic when hearing about the news of a "spiritual successor" to the game. However, the game came out, and when I finally got around to being able to buy it, I was disheartened to say the least at seeing the reviews. I mean, 90% negative? Surely something had to be wrong. I thought to myself, "Clearly something is amiss, clearly these people missed something or were looking too hard". However, I can say now without a doubt, sadly, that they were right.

Now, to be fair, and give credit where credit is due, it's one of the most gorgeous looking games I've ever played. It is so seriously well produced that it's insane, and makes me upset it isn't just a short film, because my god, the visuals are amazing and you can tell some seriously talented artists worked on creating this world, but that's the thing, it's not a "world" as much as it is just a bunch of small, random buildings with some of the single most unintuative, infuriating "puzzles" to ever grace a puzzle adventure game. I am not even being facetious about this, believe me. Like I said, seeing the reviews, I thought "No, this can't be right" but no, they were totally right. Everything about this is, aside from the visuals, is so sub par it broke my heart.

The music isn't anywhere as memorable, the "plot" is nearly nonexistent, and told to you in really cool looking story scenes in a dialogue you can't understand so you're sort of just grasping at straws to make a coherent story out of it, the characters are pretty plain and uninspired with no real personality behind them and the gameplay, oh god, it's just sad. The game works (at least when I finally played it across this last summer after it's been properly patched and updated, and also thankfully dropped down to a 10 dollar price ticket) totally fine, but it's so poorly conceived puzzle wise that it just makes you mad more than anything else that somebody thought these were acceptable puzzles.

I usually don't harp on things like this, but man, I was so excited for this, I'd waited so long for a Neverhood successor, and then to get this game, it just....it really did break my heart in two. I wanted to like it. I even thought some of the stuff in the game was cool and interesting at points, but on the whole, I just cannot recommend this title because it frankly is just boring and felt put together for the sake of putting something together to cash in on the memory of what was a great PC adventure title back in the day. All that being said, I would like to say that I'd be very curious to see if the people behind it were to make something else, even in the same style, how that might fare with this as a learning curve, because I think they have potential, it just wasn't with this title.

Another thing I'd to add, however, is that people have stated, "These reviews are unfair, you're comparing it to your nostalgia for a different game!", and on the whole, no, I'm not. My nostalgia for The Neverhood had very little to do with the actual reviewing of this title. Yes, I compared it to it, but on the whole, the problems with this game aren't because it's not The Neverhood, my problems with this game are simply because it's busted as all hell. I'm reviewing it on its merits alone, and I'm sad to say, those merits are few and far between. The sound is decent enough, the voice acting is pretty good, the visuals are out of this world, but everything else, gameplay especially (and to me, that's the core of, ya know, A GAME) just aren't enough to save it.

Armikrog is labeled an puzzle game, sure, but the only thing I found puzzling was how this managed to get published in the state that it's in.

It' a shame, really: I loved The Neverhood and grew up with it so why give Armikrog 3 stars? Well...

The game promised extremely well at the start ofthe Kickstarter - backed it and waited patiently until it came out - obviously excited - and expecting something that would have been a spiritual link to The Neverhood.

It was! To my surprise it was exactly as they had offered it, nothing and less and, sadly, nothing more: the puzzles seemed to have become easier and there was no real challenge to them, mainly now that I'm no longer a child and the project was thought with people like - well - like me in mind rather than a child.

Still, the crispy feeling of the claynimation is there, the nice humor that still made me chuckle there and there was in the game so, all in all, it was a nice effort to give the fan of the first game a spiritual sequel.

Confession: This is a biased review. I backed the project on Kickstarter, I'm a (relatively recent) fan of The Neverhood, and I've got four or five of Doug TenNapel's graphic novels on my bookshelf (and an original Earthworm Jim ink-wash drawing on my wall). I'm also a sucker for stop-motion animation.

With those biases in mind, I'm happy I backed the project. This is a gorgeous spiritual successor to The Neverhood. It retains some of the same gameplay and design quirks that we may have forgotten in the nearly 20 years (!!) since its release, and bizarrely takes a small step backwards with regard to the user interface (no custom cursors or interaction feedback this time around, which is perplexing). But I found this game's puzzles to be easier to understand, to require less backtracking (though still some), and I was engaged enough to finish the title in one extended sitting.

I'm nowhere near objective enough to recommend this game to those who aren't fans of the The Neverhood or this style of point-and-click adventure. If you're sensitive to a somewhat opaque UI and the occasional bug or three, I'd say wait out the next few updates before diving in. But if you've read all this and your curiosity is still piqued, give it a whirl!

About an hour into my playthrough. So far, I like it. Feels like an extension of The Neverhood in spirit, as promised. I agree with some of the complaints, though a lot of those related to gameplay and pacing could just as easily apply to The Neverhood. I was really expecting the worst given some of the negative press, but so far I'm just not experiencing the same dissonance between this and the adventure games of yesteryear. No bugs yet, either.

But, I'm only 20% through. Maybe I've just been lucky so far..? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Full review:

http://wp.me/p55m9h-Xv

They repeat puzzles, the UI is terrible (generic mouse cursor, doesn't highlight things you can interact with, so you just end up clicking everywhere), it lacks polish, there are tons of bugs. Admittedly, the claymation visuals are awesome, but that's about all it has going for it. The story is okay, but the main characters are relatively endearing. None of this is enough to save it because it's just a boring and frustrating game.