Monday, June 3, 2013

Back From The Neverhood: Armikrog

I've been playing video games for a long time. Since our family first got a household computer, my brother and I have been playing games on it. We never had a console until Christmas 2001 saw my parents give in and buy us (me) an Xbox. However, I will always look fondly back at those days spent playing those games on the computer, installed in blocks of anywhere from one to six floppy diskettes. Commander Keen, Treasure Mountain, Gizmos and Gadgets, Operation Neptune and many, many more.

Then there came the CD games. Wow. CD-ROM's. They were something else. The games got bigger, better, more intricate. One game that I will always treasure for its oddness and its beauty is the 1996 release The Neverhood, from the creator of Earthworm Jim, Doug TenNapel. This game was a claymation, point and click adventure game that was funny, bizarre, beautiful and difficult. It was a puzzle solver with as much humour and challenge as the first Portal installment. We spent hours on that game, playing it over and over again because the characters like Klaymen, Hoborg and Klogg were so much fun.

That is why I practically screamed with excitement when I saw that the creators of The Neverhood had started a Kickstarter campaign to make a "spiritual successor" to The Neverhood. As if Skullmonkeys hadn't happened.

If you watch the Kickstarter video - and I highly recommend you do - this game looks just as fun and even more bizarre, using the same wonderful claymation techniques that made The Neverhood so awesome. And the voice talent! Veronica Belmont! Jon Heder! ROB PAULSEN! COME ON!

There are some really great rewards on this one, including copies of the game, t-shirts, art books, comic books, soundtracks and - if you've got the dough - a credit in the game as either a thank you or "additional animation". Because they teach you how to animate and then let you animate on the game!

I've pledged and I hope you will, too. Let's get these guys up and rolling!

Mahalo.

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