Please Note: The author of this article backed this title on Kickstarter. His view, therefore, may be slightly skewed by a pre-existing interest in the game. Please keep this in mind while reading.

Crowdfunding has given the world a fantastic opportunity to dig classic genres and franchises from the depths of obscurity, and bring them back into the waiting arms of their fans. Thanks to this, our digital marketplaces run rampant with retro throwbacks and Metroidvanian adventures. The Neverhood was not a pixel art platformer and it didn’t feature any character upgrades. It was a point and click adventure game, developed by the creator of Earthworm Jim, and released in 1996 by Dreamworks Interactive. Animated entirely in clay, it stood out from others in the genre. Unfortunately, while the game received positive reviews, it was not a commercial success. While the game did receive a sequel in the form of a more marketable 2D platformer, it wasn’t what fans had wanted. As the rights to the IP passed from Dreamworks to EA it became even more evident that The Neverhood would never receive a proper sequel. However, in 2013, it was announced that the team behind The Neverhood and Earthworm Jim would once again unite on a new project entitled Armikrog, which would serve as a spiritual sequel to The Neverhood.

Armikrog tells the story of Tommynaut and his alien, talking dog, Beak-Beak. Upon crash landing on an alien planet, they are quickly discovered by a hostile creature. Seeking a place to hide, they run inside a huge tower called Armikrog. With the creature waiting outside they have no choice but to explore the tower and uncover its mysteries.

Like its predecessor, Armikrog is a point and click adventure game animated entirely in clay. The developers at Pencil Test Studios have taken point and click quite literally as that is the extent of your control. There does not appear to be any complex inventory system. Upon picking up an item, Tommynaut simply stows it away inside his chest. When you click the place that an item can be used, Tommynaut will automatically grab the correct item and use it. This serves to alleviate some of the “use everything on everything” situations often encountered in point and click games. At the same time, some may feel this system over-simplifies the gameplay. I would state, however, that right from the start Armikrog presents you with some fairly tough puzzles. This is the type of point and click that you’ll want to play with a notebook handy for writing down strange symbols, which may or may not be hints for a much later puzzle.

Perhaps the game’s most interesting mechanic comes in the form of switching between Tommynaut and Beak-Beak. At any time you can simply click on Beak-Beak to begin playing as him. The opposite can be done to switch back to Tommynaut. When playing as Beak-Beak you’ll see in black and white, and be able to see some things that Tommynaut can’t. Early in the game you’ll have to use Beak-Beak to find a series of hidden symbols within the first few areas of the tower. Tommynaut can then input these symbols into a puzzle to open a door. Beak Beak can also recover small items from areas that are too small for Tommynaut to enter and bring them back to him. Beak-Beak can also transform when fed certain items. In the demo he was able to grow wings and fly Tommynaut to safety at one point. This could potentially lead to some A Boy and His Blob esque moments of navigational puzzle solving, but we’ll have to wait until we see more to know if they truly take advantage of that mechanic.

As for the Wii U version, Mike Deitz and Ed Schofield of Pencil Test studios remained fairly tight lipped. They did however say that the reason the Wii U version is missing the August 18th launch set for the PC version, is in order to give it truly unique features. The Wii U version of Armikrog will not simply add off tv play, but will include features not present in any other version of the game. What will these features be? A few early Kickstarter images give us some hints. However, the guys from Pencil Test studios were adamant that those were just concepts and that we’d have to wait and see what they’d be doing in the actual game.