Haimrik

A puzzle game where you can turn words into objects, and use them to solve puzzles, has a lot of potential. Sadly, there are only a few words you can turn into objects, and many of them are fairly obvious - torch, knife, crossbow. Which turns this from a game one ought to solve with his or her imagination, into a game of guess how you're expected to solve the puzzle. There are also only a handful of puzzle types, so solving them becomes easier the more you advance, making the game more predictable than it ought to be. After all, in each segment there are only a handful of nouns you can turn into objects, so you can quickly scour the screen for them, without reading the text presented. Not that the text is any good. For a game revolving around stories and words, Haimrik has a fairly boring plot, and the lines you can interact with seem hastily written - for example "Walking over a BRIDGE of words, Haimrik grabbed a SWORD for protection. He had to carefully avoid GAPS..." The game is also fairly linear, but the segments between puzzles only serve as fodder, so it doesn't make much of a difference. But my biggest gripe with the game is that it suffers from a bad case of xtreme, where a game that could appeal to every age group tries very hard to prove it's not a game for kids. In Haimrik that means lots of gratuitous gore. Frankly, I would have much preferred that creativity going towards more animations, and towards improving existing animations, making the game feel less cheap.

The core mechanic does get a little bit tedious towards the end (constant running back and forth between words to find the solution and only being able to carry one item at a time with it being replaced by other pickups unless the items were supposed to be combined). Thankfully, it only took 4 hours.

I am amazed that a game could be rated so high, yet I find it so boring I dont want to finish it, even if its short. Visuals look neat and voice work is fine, thats about only thing I can praise the game for. Story/writing is kind of dumb/boring. You are playing as a pathetic basement dweller in his moms house that sets out on adventure to save the kingdom. I found that neither interesting nor amusing. Movement and combat are slow, almost a drag. The word puzzles mechanics are very simple and not always clear whats expected, turning into a situation of trial and error. I wasnt expecting anything spectacular and, to be honest, Im kind of surprised this game felt so boring to me, but it failed to catch any interest whatsoever and I much rather dedicate the time elsewhere.

I'm not done with the game yet, but I do need to point out: The game is fixed full screen on primary monitor. No going to windowed mode or choosing which screen if you have multiple. The controls are also fixed and unchangable. The default keyboard controls are unplayable for me how they're used (WASDQERF_, at least). Will come back at it with a controller later, but I'd rather be able to remap keys to useful keyboard and play that way. The game itself is a fun actiony puzzle game.