girl's wild journey
to fetch a pail of water
(also, Mr. Bun!)
Additional Comments:
Finding a good Flash game can prove to be a difficult task. Sure, you can be guided along by sticking to sites like Newgrounds or Kongregate and adhering to their best of the best as promoted by the general user base. Except, like most of my video gaming ventures, I want to find an interesting title because I find it interesting; not because it's top rated. There's times when I'm specifically looking for a top rated game, and this isn't just for Flash games, but games in general, as I'm intrigued to see what the latest craze is. That's how I originally came across stuff like VVVVVV, the Touhou series, and even Abobo's Big Adventure. But most of the time, I want to see what sort of rarefied gems I can find lost in the forgotten trough of gaming. And unlike professional games, there is a metric ton of Flash games hidden away in the bowels of mediocrity. The problem? About 99% of them are lost in the digital ether with good cause.
On my latest quest to dig up a quirky little specimen from the forgotten unknown, I came across Anika's Odyssey. Since it was the first game out of a dozen or so randomized picks that looked and sounded mildly interesting, I decided to try it out. Plus it was point and click, a genre that I feel works in the Flash realm just as easily as any other medium, or at least should in theory. Unfortunately, I find myself at a loss of words. Anika's Odyssey is one of those games that just sort of happened. It wasn't exactly a waste of my time, yet it failed to enrich my continual gaming repertoire with good reason. It left me straight-faced; neither dejected nor elated. An odd balance of good and bad manages to let the game rest in a perpetual limbo of inquest - attempting to uncover the root of gaming deliberation on behalf of a young girl's journey after her stuffed toy. Is it really a game when the choices made by the end user have literally zero impact on the overall outcome?
The same argument can be made for the entire visual novel genre, except highly regarded visual novels are ripe with choice allowing the player to experience a wealth of tangential story lines. Same can be said for any point and click or hidden object game, except most of these games promote exploration and experimentation. Outside of the vine "puzzle," Anika's Odyssey fails in that department. In many respects, Anika's Odyssey reminds me of elements of Tengami - elementary, almost primitive game design where the player is lead by a leash in an extremely focused direction. I remember how heavily I harped on Myst's lack of gameplay, but looking back, I find myself sorely mistaken. If anything, Myst should be an entry level model for the point and click genre. Anything less feels futile and plays...well, barely plays at all.
The problem with Anika's Odyssey is how straightforward the game plays. As the screen moves, you're really only offered a single clickable element at any one time and that element is glaringly obvious. Though, I'll admit, the steam machine tripped me up for a couple minutes only because breaking a machine to make it work defies logic. Didn't I break the cloud machine in Paper Mario to purposefully make it malfunction so the sun can shine again? Why would I use the very same technique to make a machine sputter back to life? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the preeminence of cogs and wheels. Still, despite this hiccup, the answer wasn't that hidden when you realize the entirety of your surroundings more or less direct you to the machine for the answer. That is, unless after scratching what I assume may be the embodiment of Māui (or so I'd like to believe, but may actually be a more amicable representation of a Mohoao, what I imagine to be the Woses of Maori mythology) enough times, he might just carry you up the mountain. Alas, that is not the case. He's just appreciative of a comforting back rub.
It's unfortunate the game suffers from such a lack of genuine gameplay because the scenery is fucking gorgeous. But looking at the outlandish landscape dreamt up from the fantastic mythology of New Zealand, I can't help but feel the aesthetics may be one of the leading factors to the game's weak play. It becomes a question if too much effort was put into creating a living, breathing piece of artwork as opposed to a magnificent background that is both beautiful and functional - at least far more functional than it is. As is, the amount of clickable objects seems to be subject to the artwork in a way that game design feels more like an afterthought, i.e. make the game work around the architecture. It reminds me of how I perceived much of Ocarina of Time's basic composition compared to other Zelda games in that the puzzle elements had to be shoehorned into an already developed landscape. Any hope of flummoxing the player is vastly reduced since slapdash puzzles typically fail to uphold serious effort on the player's part.
Maybe I'm just overthinking Anika's Odyssey. Perhaps the game is meant to be nothing more than an entry level attempt at the point and click genre, but even then I feel robbed of what I believe could have been a marvelous game. It's possible the game's length may be partly to blame, but I don't think that's the case. Going in, I expected a shortened experience only because it was a Flash game, and I safely made a prediction based on Hood Episode 1's length. Perhaps it's the rather barren story, except I find the story works for the product. It can be considered a little goofy or outright preposterous at points - wings? Really? But it fits the overall style; sort of has that innocent Aesop quality to it. Like the Tortoise and the Hare, here we have Anika and the Falcon - though I'm sure it's meant to be a representation of one of the mighty tapu who's come to steal Anika's Mr. Bun.
The sound, the looks, the story - everything else falls into place like a perfect little puzzle. Unfortunately, the most important element: gameplay, failed to round out the equation and I find it a tragedy as I think Anika's Odyssey could have been a fantastic, if quaint little point and click game. It managed to conjure some incredible wonder but sadly turned the journey through a scant slice of Aotearoa into an act of embarrassing stumbles ending with an elaborate score of egg on the face. Sorry, Anika. Next time, just leave Mr. Bun inside when you're sent to fetch a pail of water.
Rating: 2 stone-rolling goats out of 5
