Armikrog

Despite technical issues and weak story I found Armikrog really engaging. [12/2015, p.66]

Armikrog copies and pastes itself several times during the game. 25% of content is original, the rest is just repetitions. You will see identical rooms, chains of actions and even puzzles.

It’s weirdly fun and funnily weird, it channels some of The Neverhood’s charm, but it’s even shorter (a playthrough will only take 2-3 hours) and nowhere near as funny. [Issue#203, p.67]

It’s such a shame that underneath this amazing art style we have an average game on all the other key elements.

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.

Anyone looking for a better example of TenNapel's creative spark should seek out a copy of The Neverhood—it hasn't aged perfectly, but it's far more entertaining than this failed follow-up.

What an utter development disaster. There are design and technical flaws in this game that can't be forgiven: it's inaccurate, some times glitches halt progress, and some solutions completely lack any logic. Truly sad, considering how beautiful it looks.

In their variety and logic, or lack thereof, the puzzles are pretty mindless, often requiring the player to merely regurgitate a pattern from one part of the world to another.

Armikrog’s release is the reason Steam refund exists. It is a great disappointment that such an unique game is released in such a buggy condition, marred with an unpolished, archaic gameplay system.

Except of visuals Armikrog has a problem with literally everything. The story is shallow, controls are unintuitive and puzzles are both silly and repetitive. [Issue#257]

Painfully short, but incredibly personal and stylistically pleasant adventure, which story is unfortunately very shallow. This shallowness is balanced by light-hearted playfulness so at the end the game deserves a space on your hard drive. Just don’t expect miracles.

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 fun little puzzler. The puzzles are reasonably enjoyable and the visual style is just lovely. But the game just seems to lack a little polish, primarily in the inventory system and the story.

Those who appreciate outrageous locales will be thrilled with Armikrog’s out-of-this-world visuals, and puzzle lovers will find plenty to entertain, but anyone looking for a smooth gameplay experience will find themselves sometimes stuck in the mud.

What could have been a gem among point-and-click adventures fails to rise above mediocrity despite its fantastic visuals.

The "claymation" is stunning, and gameplay wise it might not be as brilliant, but it can still deliver some hours of good fun.

It’s more confusing and frustrating than fun, and since there’s almost no dialogue or story, there isn’t anybody to root for (or against) or care about. As a result, the game was a fairly boring slog through repetitive puzzles, and I was actually happy that it was so short.

Armikrog is original, extremely funny and very unique, but it could be more refined and it's a bit limited in its puzzle structure. It's also not that long, especially if you consider the steep price (which is probably caused by the claymation technique, but still… ).

This clay could have used some more time in the kiln, that’s for sure.

So much of Armikrog feels neglectful and lazy, lacking anything to make it stand out. Even the claymation look of it doesn’t save it from the carelessness put into it. It’s hard to see where that million dollars went. All of that said, it isn’t terrible, but if you’ve never had the pleasure of playing The Neverhood, do yourself a favor and pick that up instead.

By the time it’s done, Armikrog feels more like The Neverhood’s mulligan.

The art direction is simply beautiful. But unfortunately the devs didn’t have the same attention to detail when it came to bug fixing and level- or puzzle design.

Armikrog is a game you really want to love. The atmosphere and the claymation cutscenes are amazing, which makes it even more pitiful that the game itself is not interesting at all and quite technically annoying.

Armikrog is a missed opportunity, but despite its design flaws and technical issues, it's worth playing even if just for the unique visual experience.

Armikrog’s memory puzzles and tenuous humour are a low point in the adventure game renaissance.

Armikrog isn't a bad point & click adventure game, but it's so far from The Neverhood.

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.

It's a real pity that a promising game like Armikrog, which is shining in terms of animation, voice acting and persona, falls so short due to various bugs, sound problems, puzzle repetition and serious design flaws such as lack of hot spots and corresponding indicator. It could be a much better game but obviously it wasn't ready for launch at this time.

A beautiful world, but the puzzles are very simple. No masterpiece, but still a great experience.

Armikrog does not surpass The Neverhood, but just like a successor to any celebrated piece of media, that would have been an impossible task. However, it does contain a unique charm in its own right which fans of The Neverhood or other old-school point-and-click adventures will especially appreciate.

A bit of a disappointment, Armikrog fails to surpass or even match the magic of The Neverhood due to repetitive puzzles, broken interfaces and a lackluster story. At least Armikrog brings more TenNapel visual goodness to compensate.

As a lovely and crazy world to explore with a charming art style and catchy music it’s just fine, but as a game Armikrog comes up significantly short.

Pencil Test Studios clearly needed time to fix the litany of embarrassing bugs that plague Armikrog at launch. Even then, it wouldn't have helped the overly simplistic story and bland puzzles. If the developer ever plans on doing a sequel, I hope it's an animated film – the visuals are the only thing Armikrog has going for it.

As a spiritual successor to The Neverhood, the game succeeds on all levels, but somehow I don’t think it will gain the same kind of cult following this time.

Amikrog is a pretty good adventure, beautifully animated, but very short and shows a blatant lack of testing.

Armikrog is a beautiful game, but full of bugs and with uninteresting story. It's a shame - The Neverhood had its unusual style and atmosphere, but this "spiritual successor" only gets the difficulty level and wonderful graphics right. Armikrog will provide a few hours of thinking, but will certainly not reach similar legendary status.

Armikrog is a love letter to old-school style of point-and-click adventure and the peculiarity of its wonderful predecessors.