Translated by
Microsoft from Spain
Microsoft from Spain
Animal Gods is a game made by Still Games, a small independent studio that is presented in partnership with this title. And with the little thing is not exaggerating, is that it consists of two people, a designer and a programmer. In Addition, he has participated in the development of the game a manager of the soundtrack and sound effects. As it would not be fair to value the game in the same way that we do with the triple A, try to highlight their positive points, but really is a title with many things to polish.
I Have read several times that Animal Gods is a game with an air to the classic Zeldas, but I can assure you that the resemblance comes by some design decisions that I guess are intentional. If the protagonist were Moreno and used firearms instead of a bow and a sword, no one would think of Link to see him. First because aesthetically has nothing to do with the Nintendo style of the 90 and second because the game is not an RPG or anything that looks like. In fact, I would not know what gender frame, because of the 2 hours that lasts more or less, one and a half you're going to walk and reading texts, without being able to decide where to go or what to say.
The rest of the time, all there is to do is kill squares (yes, so are the enemies) either with the sword or with the bow, depending on the scenario chosen. In the Third World available, we will not have any weapon, just a layer that will allow us to glide over some currents that, apparently, could be poison, but the protagonist does not have just clear. If to this little activity, you add a repetitive music and a speed rather paused, the best thing that can happen to you while you play it is that you fall asleep. In Addition, the game has two other unexplained design decisions that slow down the pace of the game.
The detail of the scenarios is rather scarce, opting for a minimalist ambience, but for some strange reason have decided to include everywhere a horizontal stripes on the roads, which I suppose are stairs. Something that, apart from making no sense in a two-dimensional world, still make the protagonist move slower. The Other design error, important in my opinion, appears in the Dialogues (rather monologues). The text advances rather slow, considering that there are no voices, the sentences are short and to pass them you have to press a button. The problem is that every two lines appear an ellipsis, which takes the same as a whole sentence to load and you also have to pass by pressing some key. A despair.
As for the history, we will be knowing it little by little, through the leaves of a diary and the notes scattered in any corner of the scenarios. Personally I have found too many religious references and not exactly critical, so I do not know very well where to catch Animal Gods in this regard. What is quite clear to me is that it does not seem like a finished game, neither at the level of script, nor of mechanics, nor of ideas in general. Something that, to be a game financed via Kickstarter, is quite troubling.
And to make even more evident that lack of ideas, when you have just traversed the endless halls of the game and you pass the game, it unlocks a new game mode called "09 Lives" that nothing varies at all. Neither the difficulty, nor the number of enemies, nor their movements. The only change is that instead of having infinite lives, we will only have nine, as its name suggests. And If we finish them all before we get to the end, we'll have to start from scratch again.
I Think the starting point of Animal Gods is very good, but as they went through the ideas of the paper to the screen, it was losing strength. The result is a game too slow, as if we wanted to encourage you to contemplate it without haste, but the problem is that there is nothing to look at, because everything is very simple.
NOTE: 4/10