Arktrum

I love surrealistic games. A friend gifted Arktrum to me, so I was really looking forward to play it. [h1]Design of Arktrum[/h1] Not much to say about the design. You see the pictures and that tells you already how beautiful this game is. It is even better in motion with all this interactable fragments floating around and the more or less destructable structures. Thanks to the amazing visual depth it can be tricky to find your way in some situations. But thats bearable since the (first) maps are not that big. On the other hand it opens nice possibilities for hidden passages. And I have to add somethinig rare: In general I turn off the music of a game even before I start for the first time. During my first run in Arktrum I decided that I want to play it with music. Unluckily you can't switch it back on during the game. But this is one of the very few games I love playing with music. It gives an extra kick for the great atmosphere. Awesome. [h2]The Controls[/h2] The kind of controlling is not new. But uncommon. You use the left and right mouse buttons for your left and your right arm, wasd to stear around and shift for switching between grabing and boxing. ...oh yes, almost fo…

Beautiful graphics and an ethereal title song are not enough to save a game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXje_5-nUTw If you want to see my first impressions as they happened, watch this video. Arktrum is a fascinating idea: WASD to move, left click to control your left hand right click to control your right. Shift to switch from Punches to Grabs. And Space to dash in a direction. Continuing momentum adds difficulty, especially combined with the dash. Add a passable skill tree for good measure. The problem is that it falls short, enemies respawn and can gang up on you easily, and checkpoints are seemingly scarce. To Arktrum's credit, I quickly forgot about the *necessary* dash/evade mechanic. If you decide to pick it up, don't make that mistake. However, in learning this when I revisited it after my stream, I got past the blue key door and had a glitch fling me back to the start of the map before crashing the game. It might have just been bad luck on my part, but that was enough for me to stand by the negative first impression I made. Hopefully someone out there enjoys this game. There certainly seems to be something interesting here. Sadly, I am not that person.

Not recommended for most players, recommended for a select few. I have mixed feelings about this game. I have played 4 levels and died a lot of times. I don't mind dying, it's just that you spawn so far back, it gets anoying. There should be more savepoints. Doing the same part over and over again gets boring. Dying at the endboss of a level (and that happens a lot) makes you do the entire level again. Once you get the feel for the controls, it is fun to play, but the game is hard and unforgiving. It gets a bit easier when you have a lot of upgrades. The graphics are very good and the soundtrack is nice. I miss the health and mana bar/counter, this would improve the game a lot. Going slow and reversing when enemies come at you is the easiest way to get around, but that makes replaying parts even longer. Personally, I will keep playing the game from time to time. The mechanics are fun and the levels look great. It is kinda addictive and I want to see more of it. Because of the difficulty, it gives a feeling of acomplishment when you advance to the next level/spawnpoint. If you don't mind playing for many hours without a lot of progress and you have the patience to learn where …