Armikrog, The Clay Animation Point & Click Puzzle Game Is Now Out, A Bit Of A Buggy Mess

Thanks again to GOG for sending another game over, I have been able to test out Armikrog tonight. It looks quite fantastic, and they did a real good job with the animations.

Initial thoughts
Let me start by saying I love clay animation, I loved playing games that used it when I was younger, and I loved TV shows that used it too. I had seriously high hopes for this game, but it's not quite as good as I was hoping.

The game is beautifully cheesy at the start with the theme tune, and it carries on being seriously awesome with the proper intro video. The visuals are just so amazing that I wish they made a TV series out of it.

I'm not one to pass up a puzzle game, especially after trying out Talos recently and loving it, but so far the gameplay isn't really drawing me in. Yeah it looks great, the puzzles are difficult at times too, but it's rather on the buggy side right now. There's reports of text completely missing, and I've come across a bug that completely stopped me progressing. Others have been able to walk through doors that you needed a puzzle to open, and lots of little game-breaking issues like that.

The menu is a bit of a mess too, instead of a continue button, you need to go into the options menu to find your saved games, which is a bit weird. There's no audio options, and really no options of any sort.

The cursor is always the standard system cursor too, I expected a clay-animated cursor that changes with what I am interacting with, so that's a bit of a let down too. This makes the game quite the pixel-hunt, as you hunt for the right spot to click, which is annoying. There is no feedback on anything either, so you could find something works later on that didn't before after an hour or so of searching when you find something you need.

There is no UI in the game itself, everything must be done using the cursor and your mind. I think that's okay for a point and click puzzle game like this, but it does amplify the confusion somewhat.

The voice audio is really weird too, it sounds like there's an echo, like it was all recorded in a massive room and it doesn't really make it sound all that good.

As for the length of the game, it's really quite short, I've seen reports of people do it in under four hours and I really expected it to be longer for a puzzle game.

I would hold off for a while until it's fixed up and playable, right now it feels quite sloppy. It's certainly not terrible, it's actually quite interesting, but it needs a really good polishing unless you want a soured experience like I had. I might look at it again when it works a little better.

You can find Armikrog on GOG and Steam. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.