I was very curious about how Armikrog can turn out way back when the Kickstarter project for it got announced. Yet, for many reasons I didn’t have too much hope even then. When it was finally released in 2015 to mostly damning reviews I considered simply forgetting about this game. But recently, after seeing it go on big discount, decided to give it a go and see how bad things really were. Turns out, they weren’t as much “bad” as they were just “tedious” or “poor”.
Just like The Neverhood, a beloved classic from several key people who were also involved with making Armikrog, this is a point and click adventure title with extremely minimalist interface. Only the left mouse click is ever even needed, as it performs all of the possible actions within the game depending on the context, from walking, to interacting, to using an item if you have one to use, to controlling the puzzle mini-games. Which certainly can have its limitations, but otherwise works really well. Especially, since unlike The Neverhood, you can switch the control between the two main characters, each with their own abilities. And, also just like The Neverhood, this is accompanied by beautiful claymation visuals and quirky tunes by Terry S. Taylor.
Unfortunately, the game also inherits lots of the bad elements from The Neverhood. The interface, as minimalist as it is, gets in the way when you’re trying to do basic things like saving/loading (game actually doesn’t seem to overwrite manual saves all that well). Vast majority of The Neverhood puzzles were pretty obnoxious with only some really cute outliers here and there, but in Armikrog we get only the ones that range from “boring” to “extremely tedious and obscure”. There are numerous weird bugs or strange design decisions everywhere. And it’s blatantly obvious that this game had only a sliver of the budget that The Neverhood had back in the day. Where the classic had lots of cute weird things “just because” and felt really playful, Armikrog focuses almost exclusively on puzzle solving with very few optional or fun things in-between.
Ultimately, while it has some cool and fun moments, its visual style is really good even on a lower budget and the tunes are great (even if not on the same level as The Neverhood or Skullmonkeys), the game is simply not fun to play. Not bad, or even that often frustrating. Simply not evoking any fun. And for a title that wanted to follow up The Neverhood that’s a damning thing to be.