#GIRAFFE AND ANNIKA FIGHTING FULL#

Take for example the cycle of day and night, another element that inevitably affects the pace of the game. It’s a shame because there were interesting ideas that perhaps have been a little overlooked in an attempt to add other features to the game to extend its duration or make it more engaging but without success. The feeling is that the game is divided into two parts that communicate little between them: one of exploration, almost obligatory, and another one of fighting placed there to give the action tone that the adventure lacks. There are no special attacks, no strategies, nothing but pressing a button at the right time until the fight ends. While the enemies try to make things more difficult, the young woman does nothing but go left and right to repel the enemy bullets.

Compared to exploration, there are only 5 battles, and Annika’s combat system never evolves.

#GIRAFFE AND ANNIKA FIGHTING FULL#

While representing the most original aspect of Giraffe and Annika, it appears to be anything but exploited to its full potential. The other sore point unfortunately also concerns the fighting. Only after defeating the second boss will we be able to have a little more autonomy that will allow us to immerse ourselves a little more. The developers of Giraffe and Annika have in fact chosen not to implement an oxygen bar after the exhaustion of which to start losing hp, this means that every second spent underwater is equivalent to immediately seeing the red bar of life diminish. Things also get worse when you fall into the water and don’t have much autonomy to return to the surface. While we manage to make sense of the fact that, given her young age and her goodness and naivety, Annika doesn’t fight ghosts in dungeons, preventing the player from being able to jump or speed up for short stretches, makes all the navigation of the first maze a process. The choice to block, behind a slow progression, of the abilities that almost every character has by now does nothing but make travel tedious in the early stages of the game and exploration anything but pleasant. Three fragments are equivalent to three bosses, each of which will give us a skill: jump, ability to resist more time underwater and sprint.

Each hit rejected will drain the enemy’s energy, until the life bar reaches the threshold that will trigger Annika’s final attack. As soon as these colored balls reach the meter, Annika can push them back, getting a rating depending on the timing as in Dance Dance Revolution. When in combat, Annika can move left and right to reach the circular markers where the energy bullets thrown by enemies converge. When instead she is forced to fight against the bosses that separate her from the fragment of the star, she does so by dancing to the rhythm of the music and not holding some dangerous weapon. Use mostly crates to hide, be patient carefully to avoid the ghosts that haunt the area or jump, swim and use platforms to solve small environmental puzzles and take the right path. Annika, the cat-eared protagonist, is indeed a child who does not fight or use violence to get ahead. Retrieving the fragments will take us inside some “dungeons”, but don’t be fooled by the word in quotes because going through them won’t be like other action or role-playing games have taught. His role is to guide and help us – even a little too much given his presence and the almost constant need to talk to him to continue – in the success of our mission: to find three star fragments and recover memory. We have no memories of the island we are on, nor of its inhabitants.

Nothing out of the ordinary, at least until we meet Giraffe, a boy with blue ears who seems to know us well, yet we don’t remember him at all. A moment later we are catapulted into a 3D world, between meadows, pumpkin crops and colorful houses. A very young or less accustomed audience to video games could however find in the simplicity of the game and in the sweet and kind traits of the characters the reasons to spend a few hours in the company of Giraffe and Annika.įew images, illustrated as in a manga, give the A to the adventure. However, the form in which everything is held up is far too simplistic and the many ideas proposed by the small development studio lack substance and a greater sense of cohesion. Atelier Mimina has chosen, for its debut title Giraffe and Annika, to tell its story as if among the paintings of a comic, interspersing these short narrative fragments with long walks in 3D environments and fights inspired by rhythm games.

Giraffe and annika fighting