If you’ve ever played either PC adventure The Neverhood or Playstation platformer sequel Skullmonkeys, well done you. Both are Claymation games made by Neverhood Inc in the late 90s with a decidedly quirky sense of humour, a wonderful look and style as all the characters and sets were made for real, and fantastic soundtracks by Terry Scott Taylor. They didn’t sell too well but maintained a cult following that allowed the team to get back together under the name Pencil Test Studios and run a successful Kickstarter for a spiritual successor to The Neverhood. That new game is Armikrog, and we’ve got our hands on the current build of the game for a quick play.
I say “a quick play” because, while I was aiming to get quite far with it, due to the rather early and rough state of the rather optimistically labelled “Beta Build” I merely ended up playing the first areas of the game over and over again as it kept crashing or glitching in various wonderful and imaginative ways. Nevertheless this still gave me a good idea about how the game was going to play and how much more I was in love with it already.
Before going on I better explain what “Claymation” actually is. It’s a contraction of “clay animation”, as in a stop-motion animation made using clay characters. The best known studio for using this technique is Aardman with Wallace & Gromit and Shaun The Sheep, whereas in gaming either the Clayfighter games or The Neverhood are the most well-known examples. It’s pretty rare in gaming really, probably because it’s a painstakingly slow process and animations have to be kept simple. When it works however it looks lovely and unique.
Tommynaut and Beak-Beak, the plasticine pals
After crash landing on a strange planet, lanky space explorer Tommynaut and his friend and sidekick Beak-Beak find themselves immediately in a bad position. Their ship is totalled, the planet’s not on any charts, and a giant monster with a tongue like a fishing rod wants to eat Tommynaut. They barely manage to escape from this beast to the safety of a nearby structure. Unfortunately this building turns out to be the weird prison known as Armikrog, and they’ll have to solve quite a few puzzles just to get out again… to say nothing of defeating the monster and getting off this planet.
In any other game Tommynaut would be a huge space marine, and even in a wacky Daedalic adventure there’d be elements of realism and mature storytelling. Armikrog however is more like a Saturday kid’s cartoon (and yes, I realise they don’t exist anymore). The Claymation style is beautiful and works well with Earthworm Jim designer Doug TenNapel’s cartoony character designs, all long limbs and big mouths. The opening monster is both scary and a delight. I realise that the low budget forced Pencil Test to make a box monster with a tongue that is literally a fishing reel, but they’ve done a great job with it and the monster ends up “charming” rather than cheap. This goes for the whole game really - all charming, hand-made and rather sweet even when a giant monster is munching on alien people.
Trapped in Armikrog!
What I particularly liked about the demo was that every room had something really interesting in it, such as a ghost with some helpful advice, a rather aggravated octopus elevator or a giant glass bell blocking your access to some controls you need. Just looking out the window at the start of the game reveals a load of funny animations involving the fishing reel monster, and you have to keep using the window to see them all (it’s worth it). I can see Armikrog being a game that keeps people playing just to see the crazy thing in the next room.
Of course this is the spiritual successor to The Neverhood, not Skullmonkeys, therefore it is an adventure game so gameplay-wise it’s really all about the puzzles. I didn’t get to see anything beyond the basics but I was generally happy with what I did see. Pushing a big orange monster across a room in order to jam a door open was an early one, although it did require taking control of Beak-Beak and finding a replacement door lever through a small tunnel. Yes, you can swap player control between Tommy and Beak-Beak, adding to the complexity of the puzzles, and it’s rather neat to get Beak-Beak on his own as the screen goes black-and-white to show how he sees the world.
The only really complicated part was actually finding the lever as it blended in to the background somewhat. Once it was picked up though, and also when Beak-Beak passed it on to Tommynaut by eating it and then throwing it up (ew), I was pleased to see one particular piece of streamlining over normal adventure games: no inventory. Tommy and Beak-Beak just picked things up and then would immediately use the correct item when I clicked the appropriate place, i.e. the lever in the lever slot. I’ve no idea if this will change in the final version of the game but if it means fully concentrating on Armikrog’s seemingly mind-bending puzzles then I’m all for that. I say “seemingly” based on how maddening The Neverhood could be with its own puzzles, although I’m already stuck at this early stage.
Last but not least, the audio is shaping up to be one of the best things about Armikrog and I’m only disappointed that there wasn’t more of it in the preview build. The sound effects were lovely of course, but I’m talking voice acting and music here. The soundtrack by Terry Scott Taylor is much like his scores for [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh4WnHlsbvM]The Neverhood[/url] and [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rlo4aHfGnk]Skullmonkeys[/url], which equates to catchy, upbeat, and frickin’ awesome. The main two voice actors are Michael J. Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 playing Tommynaut and veteran cartoon actor Rob Paulsen (best known as two-thirds of the Animaniacs and the original animated Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) as Beak-Beak. Both are great and I’m hoping they’re not just relegated to video sequences as they are right now, since I want to hear some witty chatter as I explore Armikrog prison.
If fat furry animals get in your way, just push them!
If I did a list of my most anticipated indie games (and I have) Armikrog would be high on there, somewhere around Pillars of Eternity and Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The lovely Claymation graphics style, cute writing and scintillating audio have already won me over, and that’s before I even find out whether the puzzles are any good or not. Personally I know if it’s as good as The Neverhood I’ll be happy, and I’ll buy it for the soundtrack alone.
Armikrog is currently sitting on a general “2015” release date, and hopefully it’ll be this Spring as the last estimate was “late 2014”. I’m twiddling my Plasticine thumbs in anticipation.
Most Anticipated Feature: Seeing what further weirdness lurks in the bowels of Armikrog prison. And the soundtrack, definitely the soundtrack.
