Armikrog

Tommynaut and his trusted companion Beak-Beak - a blind dog that still always seems to know where to go - have crashlanded on a mysterious planet. They're greeted by a weird beast that tries to eat Tommynaut, but Beak-Beak saves him and they escape into a fortress and the door slams shut behind them.

Now they'll need to find a way out of there, but that's easier said than done as a point-and-click adventure awaits to uncover the secrets of the fortress known as Armikrog.

"Tommynaut is an astronaut who comes from a long line of astronauts that used to be heroes, but they've kind of fallen from grace over the last few generations," explains animation lead Mike Dietz. "His mission is basically to try and save his planet and save his family's name. And right at the beginning of this game he ends up crashing his space ship on this strange planet so he doesn't get off to a great start."

"[Beak-Beak] is a blind alien space dog," continues Dietz. "And they're kind of like an odd couple, buddy film kind of duo."

It's difficult to write about Armikrog without starting with The Neverhood. It may not have sold a whole lot, but the clay and stop motion animated adventure is something of a cult classic.

"We knew we wanted to do another game like this," says Mike Dietz. "When we did The Neverhood, those characters and that storyline was created by our pal Douglas TenNaple."

The Neverhood was an exloration heavy point-and-click adventure where as Klaymen you explored a strange world.

"So I called up Doug and said: "do you wanna do another one of these?" And did he have any ideas of like a storyline for the game and characters, and Armikrog was an idea that he had been kicking around for a while and he was looking for a place for it to live. And so he sent us a whole bunch of drawings of the characters and the world, and wrote a brief outline of the storyline, and it just sounded perfect for what we wanted to do."

It's not easy to find funding for a game that's following on a 15 year-old title that most would describe as a commercial flop. But via Kickstarter Pencil Test Studios managed to secure funding and later on Versus Evil stepped in as publisher.

Armikrog can be mistaken for a casual adventure game. There is no huge inventory to manage, items will be automatically used in relevant spots, and as you move from room to room, especially when the game is being piloted by one of its creators it seems to progress without friction.

But that's not the entire truth. Armikrog is a game set in an alien world, and things aren't always what they seem. The addition of Beak-Beak who is fully playable and able to crawl through small tunnels also adds another layer to the mix and overall from what little we've experienced we think you'll likely get stuck every now and then on a puzzle, just like you should.

Another interesting thing is the amount of detail that has gone into the world and the backdrops. Look out the window in the very first room and you'll be treated to a short clip of the monster you escaped chasing down some creatures that weren't as lucky and there are more of those shorts to enjoy if you peek out again.

The rooms are adorned with art and hieroglyphs and these have actual meaning if you take the time to deciphre them, but of course you can still enjoy the adventure at a more casual level. Mike Dietz described it as part of the enjoyment is not just solving the puzzle, but solving the puzzle of the world and the story.

Obviously, the big selling point of Armikrog is its artstyle and the world. It's easy to understand why there aren't more stop motion animated adventures made (it's painstaking work), but it really is a shame. There's just something about how the characters move and how the environments look that's just delightfully appealing. Maybe it has something to do with growing up on cartoons made will similar methods, but nevertheless it endears us to Armikrog from the very first frame.