Quite honestly, if the devs let this game cook for like another year or however long, I think they really could've had something special on their hands.
“KAMIKO” is a short level based arcade styled beat em' up. The game consists of four(?) short and simple stages. Each stage requiring a tiny bit more of your puzzle solving skills than the last. It takes a good hour or so to beat the game on your first run and around 30 minutes, even less, for subsequent replays with any character. Once you've completed the first run, the maps become super easy to navigate and become even more and more menial. There isn't much replay value to be found to be honest. I didn't notice any storytelling elements that changed with whatever character you chose, though each character has their own unique way of playstyle. I think this is another one of the missed opportunities this game has. Furthermore, I really wish they would have expanded upon the individual selections of the character's more than just gameplay.
Oh! Additionally, one of the puzzles involves you pressing a switch and narrowly making it across a bridge that persists for just the tiniest amount of time. If you get sidetracked for even the slightest moment, you'll have to retry until succession. Meanwhile, enemies keep respawning. Again. And again. And there's nothing you can do to make them not respawn. Wonderful.
Combat in this game is really lacking in depth, progression throughout stages sees character benefits only in health and stamina. While playing the stages, the buffs may seem trivial due to the fact that there's no punishment for dying, as you respawn back to life with full health and stamina at the cost of 5 seconds of waiting. The final boss is really going to require you to have those health bonuses if you play reckless, though. Honestly, I believe that if they had let this sit in development for a bit longer, we would have had a game with a more compelling story and probably even a better combat system. Mashing “A” while dashing between all 4 corners of the map gets boring, in addition to the infinite enemy respawns and limited health spawn points. 4 times. Without any significant changes.
The gameplay also switches between playing like a Zelda-like game to spontaneously becoming a bullet-hell. That switch-bridge puzzle I mentioned earlier? Yeah, there's like 2 or 3 of those. Grabbing a key to open up a door? Great! Just traverse the entire map while the enemies you killed 5 minutes ago respawn again and make your way to the door without getting hit. Grabbing an orb to place on a pedestal? Nice! Just know that you have to do that twice or else you can't progress. Also, the orbs are located in different areas. You'll have to play this pseudo bullet-hell game 3 times in a level. You can't fight back until you place the item in its respective area or until you get hit and drop the orb. Easily one of my most disliked aspects of the game.
On the contrary, the art and music direction is super cute. I think this is honestly the best part about the game. They really nailed the pixel art for what it's worth, to be honest. I wish they had used the style featured on the game's cover as the style of the graphics. I prefer that and the style of the character CG's much more than the actual sprites featured during gameplay. Not going to complain much on that front since the game is absolutely dirt cheap.
TLDR: Short but sweet beat em' up that I personally believe had the potential to be so much more. Pickup when it's on sale, it ends up costing like $2, I think it's worth the +1 hour of playtime.
“KAMIKO” is a short level based arcade styled beat em' up. The game consists of four(?) short and simple stages. Each stage requiring a tiny bit more of your puzzle solving skills than the last. It takes a good hour or so to beat the game on your first run and around 30 minutes, even less, for subsequent replays with any character. Once you've completed the first run, the maps become super easy to navigate and become even more and more menial. There isn't much replay value to be found to be honest. I didn't notice any storytelling elements that changed with whatever character you chose, though each character has their own unique way of playstyle. I think this is another one of the missed opportunities this game has. Furthermore, I really wish they would have expanded upon the individual selections of the character's more than just gameplay.
Oh! Additionally, one of the puzzles involves you pressing a switch and narrowly making it across a bridge that persists for just the tiniest amount of time. If you get sidetracked for even the slightest moment, you'll have to retry until succession. Meanwhile, enemies keep respawning. Again. And again. And there's nothing you can do to make them not respawn. Wonderful.
Combat in this game is really lacking in depth, progression throughout stages sees character benefits only in health and stamina. While playing the stages, the buffs may seem trivial due to the fact that there's no punishment for dying, as you respawn back to life with full health and stamina at the cost of 5 seconds of waiting. The final boss is really going to require you to have those health bonuses if you play reckless, though. Honestly, I believe that if they had let this sit in development for a bit longer, we would have had a game with a more compelling story and probably even a better combat system. Mashing “A” while dashing between all 4 corners of the map gets boring, in addition to the infinite enemy respawns and limited health spawn points. 4 times. Without any significant changes.
The gameplay also switches between playing like a Zelda-like game to spontaneously becoming a bullet-hell. That switch-bridge puzzle I mentioned earlier? Yeah, there's like 2 or 3 of those. Grabbing a key to open up a door? Great! Just traverse the entire map while the enemies you killed 5 minutes ago respawn again and make your way to the door without getting hit. Grabbing an orb to place on a pedestal? Nice! Just know that you have to do that twice or else you can't progress. Also, the orbs are located in different areas. You'll have to play this pseudo bullet-hell game 3 times in a level. You can't fight back until you place the item in its respective area or until you get hit and drop the orb. Easily one of my most disliked aspects of the game.
On the contrary, the art and music direction is super cute. I think this is honestly the best part about the game. They really nailed the pixel art for what it's worth, to be honest. I wish they had used the style featured on the game's cover as the style of the graphics. I prefer that and the style of the character CG's much more than the actual sprites featured during gameplay. Not going to complain much on that front since the game is absolutely dirt cheap.
TLDR: Short but sweet beat em' up that I personally believe had the potential to be so much more. Pickup when it's on sale, it ends up costing like $2, I think it's worth the +1 hour of playtime.