Armikrog Reviews
Armikrog is a very short game, its price reflecting its brevity. However, the repeated puzzles are a regrettable misstep, and the spartan sound design woefully undercuts the impressive claymation visuals. The most impactful visuals are frontloaded, leaving no sense of narrative crescendo. Sadly, the game feels like it loses steam much too quickly.
I'm not saying Armikrog isn't worth a go; it's charming, happy, and reminiscent of the time when stop motion was the most impressive style of animation. The game is delightfully odd and will absolutely make you laugh at least a handful of times. Unfortunately, the overwhelming lack of care put into some stuff that modern developers really shouldn't be getting wrong is noticable.
Armikrog is a decent game that holds great respect to the classic 90s-style cartoon humour using clay as the art form. The responsiveness of clicking interactive objects of any kind is extremely poor, and may feel like it does not work in some cases, but will work later. The puzzles are excellent and provide great use of tracking down hints and clues throughout the areas. The voice acting is pure comedic art; however, not enough is in the game to truly allow it to reach stellar results.
Many of the puzzles, for instance, are poorly conceived or utterly obtuse, and there's an awful lack of direction that frequently puts a halt to your progression
Armikrog is a bit of a diamond in the rough. It's rough and it's a bit awkward but it's a solid choice if you're after a bit of console pointing and clicking. Just don't go into it expecting a 90s style adventure game with witty dialogue out the wazoo and plenty of items to rub on other items at your leisure. This is a very focused title and it both benefits and suffers for that.
Hardcore adventure game fans will still enjoy themselves here, but poor players dipping their toes into this genre for first time will be left scratching their heads, not from the puzzles, but due to the lack of fun found herein.
When I started playing Armikrog I didn't know what to expect, and I've always said that when going into games that I have no knowledge about other than some screenshots, I should expect the unexpected, and I have to admit, that is exactly what I got.
Armikrog squanders the real, doing nothing interesting with its sense of space and temptation to explore, because every new chamber seems identical to the last. In fact, if The Neverhood has a sequel, it may be 2003's Samorost, from Amanita Designs—a precious cosmos of tinkering little mysteries. By the time it's done, Armikrog feels more like The Neverhood's mulligan. As if this is the first one, the prototype, the do-over, with less to offer than familiarity, all of which leads to the more lavish incarnation made nearly two decades ago. And after that loses steam, and you want a bit of action in your life, then you make Skullmonkeys.
Wait and hope for some major patches for now, but even then Armikrog still won't feel actually finished. Shame.
Ultimately, Armikrog is a failure, but it's not a failure that is supposed to be hated with a fiery passion or forgotten about. If Pencil Test Studios learn their lesson, it can be a launching point for a better game that fully realizes their potential. For the player though, the best choice would be to stick with good, old Neverhood.
Though it starts with a glimmer of excellence, Armikrog's luster fades over time. It inevitably feels empty, falling flat in its effort to develop its characters, fill out its world with compelling atmosphere, and provide consistent puzzles with sound logic. While the game's claymation visuals are delightful and unique, that quality alone isn't enough to make it worth recommending. What remains is a half-baked experience that, for all the personality it wears on its sleeve, fails to captivate in any meaningful way.
There is so much squandered potential in Armikrog it hurts. The voice acting is great, but there's not enough of it; the visuals and animations are superb, but let down by repeated puzzles. Pencil Test Studios has created a fantastic claymation setting and fun characters, but in terms of gameplay it sticks too closely to the old-school point and click formula for its own good. Fans of the genre may get a kick out of the old fashioned style, but beyond a well-realised stop motion aesthetic, there's little here for anyone else.
Cut-scenes, visuals and music aside, there's really not much game here, what with the somewhat average puzzle design and lacking rewards to keep on going. I'm happy that Tennapel and the team at Pencil Test were able to get back into the whole clay-mation business, but I can't help but think more could've been done with this.
In the end, that is where I stand with Tommynaut and Beak-Beak's adventure. I am torn on it because I absolutely loved some of the things that were done, but also came away with the distinct impression that there simply should have been more.
Armikrog's memory puzzles and tenuous humour are a low point in the adventure game renaissance.
Provided you don't get hung up by myriad design problems or a progress-halting bug, Armikrog is a monotonous and overly simplistic adventure
Doug, I love your work as a whole, but Armikrog feels like an unpolished mess. If the entire game had received the effort that was put towards the visuals, this would have easily been the spiritual successor to games that I have very fond memories of. This clay could have used some more time in the kiln, that's for sure.
Armikrog is a game that has had obvious care and exacting attention given to its visual design and animation… at the expense of almost everything else. A bland and woefully short game with asinine puzzles and an unresponsive interface, it's beautiful but that's about it.
The puzzles often require the player to merely regurgitate a pattern from one part of the world to another.
Armikrog is often too old-school for its own good, and it's impregnable for those who don't know the genre for all its faults. Those that manage to scratch the surface won't necessarily be rewarded for their efforts, either, with a paper-thin plot and characters that are just too hard to root for. The art style (and opening song) may be enticing, but sadly that's all that this retro-styled point-and-clicker has to offer.