The Neverhood

When I first saw this game I thought that it was for kids. The characters were claymation, so what was I supposed to think? Anyway, after spending a little time with the game, I realised that it could be difficult even for me, let alone kids.

Story

Hoborg created the Neverhood. He thought that his new world would make him happy, but instead it made him realise how alone he is. So he created Klog. Klog, however, was evil. All he wanted was the Crown of Life, which gave Hoborg the power to create. One day he managed to steal it from his ruler's head and thus put Hoborg to a neverending sleep before he could finish his world and fill it with people. Fortunately, when Hoborg froze, he held a life seed in his hand, which later fell to the ground. We play the role of Klayman (the former life seed) and of course our goal is to save the Neverhood and wake up the true king.

Opinion

I don't know if I would have liked this game if it were done with normal characters and backgrounds instead of claymation. There's absolutely no story during the game. There's the setup and the end. That's it. The graphics are repetitive and there are no characters to talk to either. But this way, the graphics are unbelievable, detto the animations and the whole game has the feeling of an idiotic matinee. Extremely funny stuff. The music is great, but they could have written a few more songs. Some puzzles are very easy, but some are really hard. The hard part is not so much solving the puzzles but finding the clues for them (e.g. the cannon coordinates). The clues are scattered around the place, so if you can't solve a puzzle at the end of the game, it may very well be that you have to go back to the beginning to do something you forgot when you were there. (A word of advice: check everything twice, before moving onto a new area in the game.)

I have to say, The Neverhood is definitely a must have.