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Armikrog

Armikrog details

Posted on 9 years ago by (@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U eShop | 4 Comments

In a new preview published by GamesBeat, new details are shared about Pencil Test Studios’ indie game Armikrog. The game was playable at GDC 2015 this week. For a summary of the latest information, check out our roundup below.

– Tommynaut is the game’s hero
– Dog companion Beak-Beak
– Demo begins with the two crash landing on a strange and hostile alien planet
– Tommynaut and Beak-Beak soon find themselves within the walls of a four-tower fortress
– The towers have mysterious secrets and environmental puzzles that Tommynaut and Beak-Beak must decode
– Game is a classic point-and-click adventure
– Use a sequence of items interlocking with environmental objects to head toward another puzzle
– Doesn’t use a traditional inventory system
– If the player has an appropriate item for a puzzle, the solution is simply to click where that item should be placed in the environment
– Ex: Tommynaut can pick up a hand crank early in the game; he later finds a device that is missing a handle; just click the device for Tommynaut to pull out the crank and start turning
– The team wants to simplify the experience and keep it about puzzle solving, and avoid vague/insane crafting sessions
– Some puzzles will require swapping to Beak-Beak
– Beak-Beak can crawl through tight spaces and travel through the towers’ strange duct ways
– Beak-Beak sees the world around him differently than Tommynaut
– Because Beak-Beak is color blind the environment turns black/white when playing as him
– Beak-Beak picks up on special wavelengths that Tommynaut can’t
– Demo has a section where Beak-Beak’s dog vision revealed an invisible clue tagged on a wall, which couldn’t be seen before
– Pencil Test Studios didn’t just build the characters out of traditional sculptural materials
– Everything in the game is created out of some form of real-world media — the rooms, objects, environments
– Design team: Ed Schofield, Mike Dietz, and Doug TenNapel
– Each of these team members are long-time animators who worked on The Neverhood
– Lighting works by pre-shooting the clay assets then putting them onto a 2D plane in Unity
– Team uses a 3D environment to move 2D assets around, which lets them throw in a specially tweaked spotlight to create the subtle illusion of the characters moving through light and shadow to match the clay backgrounds

In a Kickstarter email sent out to backers, Pencil Test Studios confirmed that Armikrog is slated for an early 2015 release on Wii U.

The developer noted that this version will offer “some cool features specific to this platform”, though “some extra time” is required to add them in. Specifics have not been shared at this time.

Pencil Test Studios’ full message states:

A quick update to let you all know that we’re still knee-deep in clay, working towards getting the game done. Things are moving quickly here, and while there’s still a lot to do, we’ve decided that we can all sleep AFTER the game is released. We’re still targeting the release of the PC, Mac and Linux versions for the end of this year–but we’ve also started to nail down our release schedule for the WiiU version as well (hoo-ray!). The WiiU will have some cool features specific to this platform that we’ll need some extra time to complete–so the official word is that Armikrog for the WiiU will be released in early 2015.

Source

Armikrog is tentatively scheduled to hit PC, Mac, and Linux in July. A Wii U version is also planned, but it’ll launch at a later date.

When exactly? At the moment, Pencil Test Studios seems to be targeting a fall release.

Producer Luis Gigliotti has also shared a few (vague) words about what Armikrog will offer on Wii U. The team will be implementing “some really cool” features “designed only for that version”.

I cannot say about the specifics [sic] but i can confirm that the WiiU version will have some really cool, WiiU specific features designed only for that version

Also worth mentioning, Gigliotti said the following when asked about a possible 3DS version:

We do want to eventually port the game over to portable consoles, mobile and tablets as well… But we want to make sure we get the PC, Mac, Linux [sic] and WiiU skus done first

Source


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