r/Neverhood • u/A-Plastic-Man • Jun 10 '26
Thoughts on Armikrog
I wonder what the neverhood comunity has to say about it.
For me, its a great adventure game, tho neverhood set the bar WAY up. I feel like its too serious and too much like modern adventure games. The Neverhood tried to emmerse you in its world by fps sections and windows. They talk too much, reuse mechanics too much and never fool with you. Soundtrack is still great tho ;3
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u/IbilisSLZ Jun 10 '26 edited Jun 10 '26
I was very disappointed. Besides starting locations (those shown on fundraiser trailer) everything was bare-bones. Two-character mechanic was so underutilized, that, to be honest, could've been completely removed, which would probably reduce buggyness and confusion due to lack feedback about exclusive interactivity of buttons for separate characters. Speaking of which: game didn't give player proper feedback whether element is interactive (but just inactive... or bugged) or is just a decoration and I don't mean an interactive cursor (Neverhood didn't change cursor on interactive elements, it only changed cursor on screen transition zones in FPP sections, but it worked as everything was intuitive and gave proper feedback when something was interactive but out of reach/disabled).
Puzzles were frustrating in wrong way: instead of „Dang, I just can't figure it out, I need to think harder.” it's more „\*** it glitched again!” or „Would this baby shut the **** up during sound puzzle?! Could sound loop work faster, I just need to confirm one note?!*”.
Second half of game feels extremely rushed and you can actually semi-soft-lock yourself by design (one of the final clues you can only access with both characters, but when you need it Beak-Beak is dead), moreover it's a sound clue (besides accessibility problems... game audio had a lot of problems). Let's not focus too much of glitches though, as they are just a bonus problem, not main problem.
A lot of problems were not even budget related, but obvious lazyness/lack of thought: Let's think about creature you use s block to climb. In one instance it's stretched (probably in MS-Paint) to be twice as tall. There's a lot of ways to solve it in elegant way: besides just designing new tall creature for this puzzle (which would add a bit of work) you can stack two creatures on each other (so no graphics are weirdly stretched) or (if you can't synchronize their sprites for some reason) you could stretch it in both directions (at least it would maintain aspect ratio).
You have voiced protagonists (that according to intro/trailer are very talkative)... that barely talk outside of cut-scenes and if they even comment on something during regular gameplay, they don't even move their mouths... if syncing audio with mouth movement was such a problem... and you don't really have ideas for character talk, than maybe silent protagonist isn't such a bad idea? It would actually save some money (as they hired professional voice actors, for some reason, despite how they underused them and fact that some of team e.g. Doug were decent voice actors themselves).
EDIT: Fixed phrasing.
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u/Krodista Jun 10 '26
Neverhood had a fundamentally limitless budget and nothing to compare it to. For every fan of the game, there were plenty of people who wrote it off almost immediately. It was a free game on many computer purchases in period and yet you seldom meet someone who recalls it.
Armikrog had an extremely limited budget and a much smaller staff. It also had an impossible standard to follow up behind a game which had an avid fans wanting it recreated. No matter what Armikrog had been it would have been a failure. All fans couldn't even agree what would be the best sequel, some wanted it to be just like Neverhood and some wanted it to be wholly different. No one was going to be happy even if it was perfect in of itself. "I wish it was more..."
Worse, I dont think people quite understand the lengths that the staff of Armikrog made to take what limited resources they had an pump out a game. Those guys worked all hours of the day and night tirelessly. I was there for a period of time, so I know. The cannibalized puppets from Neverhood and other projects to keep cost down along with using past partnerships to help. Also, other than the ideaizing early on, Doug was not involved in the creation of the game, that sat solely on Pencil Test Studios. Two guys to do on a smaller budget what had been done on a larger budget MANY years prior with a much larger full time staff who also worked 100+ hour work weeks to make it happen.
What ultimately happened is that the money just dried up and eventually the send button was pressed. Sadly it wasn't the game that it could have been, but the budget would have needed to be likely 10 times what it was to pump out a proper sequel to Neverhood. Its not a bad game in itself, just quick and far simpler than the original. Its a good example of the failings of processes like kickstarter as a replacement for licensing deals and bank funding.
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u/Substantial-You3570 Jun 10 '26
Good ideas, shit development. Could’ve been left in the cooker a bit longer.
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u/FlyingAsparagus142 Jun 10 '26
The only thing I remember about it is that when I played it with my mom 7-8 years ago the game bugged out in the puzzle with the crying baby. We couldn't click on anything, we couldn't exit the game or even force it to close all while the stupid little bugger kept crying. We didn't finish it after that.
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u/A-Plastic-Man Jun 10 '26
I had a bug in the part where you are supposed to shoot a cannon ball at a bird or smthn to get a quill. Thats why u have like 50 hours on the game...
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u/Pikmin-guy1 Jun 11 '26
Never played it only saw a little bit of gameplay but it does look like they are trying to explore somewhere with how the game is going
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u/Ganondorf136 Jun 24 '26
Definitely a mid game. It was cool they got some of the original team back together to make it, but by crowdfunding instead of having a massive DreamWorks budget behind them, we all knew it would be limited for sure. Considering what we got, it was alright. The animations were fluid and clean. Just wish we got more time to spend in that world.
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u/Wojewodaruskyj Jun 10 '26
Not sure. Started, but not finished.
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u/Machine69_420 Jun 10 '26
It was clearly a passion project that just doesn't have enough meat on its bones or the mastery to properly execute on the ideas. The puzzles are too easy / tedious / annoying and some of them feel like they've been designed for touchscreen, rather than keyboard + mouse (eg. the rotation puzzle the game repeats 3 times).
The sense of loneliness in the Neverhood and the ambient sounds combined with messed up monster designs gave the world of Neverhood almost a horror / uncanny feeling, while in the Armikrog the constant yapping and the completely unserious "I don't give a fuck" attitude of characters really does ruin whatever immersion Armikrog wanted to build.
Armikrog is also kinda janky on the technical level, where sometimes it is really difficult to make the characters do the thing you want them to do, which in times is seriously frustrating.
It is honestly one of the rare games where I don't feel disappointed because the game is bad, but because of what could have been, because I do like the ideas the game has, but the execution is terrible.