Armikrog

I found this to be an enjoyable game that was bogged down with a great deal of sound issues and a couple game breaking bugs that were fixed with a quick restart of the game. The voices, sound effects, and music go in and out at random intervals (usually if I clicked multiple times during scene changes) and once I actually had two songs playing at the same time. Also, there were a couple of times where the game became corrupted and the screen became pixellated. This usually only happened if I got the controlled character stuck in a corner and repeatedly clicked to move him. This was easily fixed by restarting the game. Despite the bugs, I thought the majority of puzzles were great and creative. The cinematics were weird and hilarious, and felt very Neverhood-esque. The claymation was smooth and properly nostalgic to past memories playing The Neverhood. Also, the Armikrog original soundtrack from Terry S. Taylor has found a happy spot in my Itunes next to his other work from The Neverhood and Skullmonkeys. His usual mix of strangeness really does compliment the game. P.S. For those worrying about the shortness of the game and the lack of UI, I do want to warn others that I did beat this game in 5 hours without aid from walk-throughs and there is no inventory system or UI effects that highlight clickable items, but the original "The Neverhood" was just as short and had the same lack of UI elements, so this shouldn't be an issue for Neverhood fans in my opinion. However, I will slightly nitpick on the choice of a simple Windows mouse pointer over a clay arrow like The Neverhood had. In my opinion, this is still a fun game if you can tolerate the bugs.

Buggy mess of a game. Sound cuts out, animations aren't right, subtitles are misaligned and frequently don't appear at all or only appear after the speech has finished. Puzzles aren't interesting at all and are re-used multiple times. Game is definitely a beta for $25. Don't waste your money, it will fall to $5 in no time flat.

This game has amazing clay visuals which, just like in The Neverhood (TNH), give the world a lot of character and charm. The music is allegedly good, but since I couldn't hear it, the world felt lifeless and cold. I had about 3 seconds of music cut in randomly, maybe four times in the whole game - the rest of the game was in complete musical silence. There's no justifiable reason that a game in 2015 should have its music not play, especially when half of the game experience is in its music. There's other problems that also hurt the game. In TNH, your mouse cursor would helpfully change shape to indicate objects you could click on, or exits to your current room - a feature that's completely lacking in this game, which means you'll be random-clicking, hoping to find what to press. There's also things like, for example, a certain button that seems like it's a game glitch, if you're interacting at the wrong time - your character will just do nothing, and you won't know why you can't click on this button. At the correct time, it will press, and you'll know that something must have happened in the next room. Truly frustrating. There's also one puzzle that is straight from TNH - the cannon. I can understand the devs wanting to call back to fun moments from TNH, and honestly the style, shape, and humor from the new cannon all felt good to me. However, the actual puzzle was identical. It broke the fourth wall, when I was asked to do the same 3-thing 3-thing code puzzle, to overcome this obstacle. All together, this is an unpolished game, and a weak sequel to The Neverhood. I wouldn't recommend buying it until they fix the music at minimum. If they lower the price, or fix some of the other smaller problems, then this game would be worth it. Otherwise, flip a coin. It's not horrible, but it's not amazing either.

Such a pity Armikrog unlike The Neverhood is way too damn short, with such a dull predictable story, and technical glitches even still, and should've been sold under $10 on both GOG and Steam.