Oh god how long has it been since Fallout 4 came out… I feel likes that’s all I’ve been doing for days and with Battlefront arriving soon I may have to switch gears soon. Just to try something new I browsed through what was new on Kickstarter and found and interesting gem of an indie game. Pankapu: The Dreamkeeper is a 2D plat-forming game where you play as the little knight who can and thrash a bunch of nightmare goo. It reminds me a lot of Earthworm Jim, the good one on the Sega 16 bit I mean. At the same time though I get the feeling it is more related to say Kung Fu Rabbit; it feels like an iOS game that somehow got ported to the big leagues. To be fair though there is a lot more going on in Pankapu in every way compared to most iOS games. A couple of interesting accolades it already has is the Kickstarter staff pick, something I usually disregard because they tend to pick terrible projects but it seems they have something this time. On the other hand this game has also been backed by the Square Enix collective, yea I didn’t know what that was at first either. Apparently they don’t get any sort of funding or backup from Square Enix but they do get PR… at a price I assume.
I was actually able to play the demo and yes I understand the game is in alpha, early alpha I assume but I think I got the gist of things. I do like the appearance of the game and its characters, more of the same but they obviously put their own creative spin on things. Some of it looks kind of rough but for the most part complete; I just hope the complete game is a bit more diverse especially in its use of monsters. Yes the nightmares have invaded but why do most of them take the shape of oddly formed black goo? Sound effects were also lacking a bit, there was some background music that was nice but besides that I kept wondering why it was oddly quite. One of those things you don’t really think about until you don’t have it anymore.
Mechanics already seem fluent and easily managed, the buttons didn’t match up to what the instructions said but it wasn’t hard to readjust. While combat isn’t exactly fast paced it does work and the ability to switch heroes is almost impressively seamless. I do wish some of the character moves worked a bit better though. Two instances of this is charging up the special attack with the power hero; it took so long I was never sure it was actually working. Then I finally stopped and tried and after what felt like forever it finally kicked in. I’m not sure if this is by design because you get protective fire balls that stick with you or if there is something wrong. Also the range fighters dodge move; why can he only dodge in one direction? You are so much likely to dodge right into another trap or monster nearby it makes the act of dodging useless. While really easy the rest of the gameplay was mildly interesting and kept my attention. I am a little interested in how power ups work though and how they differ from the RPG style leveling system the game has. At this point the description makes it sound as if they do primarily the same thing and the game doesn’t seem complicated enough to warrant two upgrade systems.
The story is usually most important to me though and this game has an unusual one. A two part story with one taking place in the real world and the other one taking place in a story… or are they both real? Or is it all the same world?! While mildly interesting there isn’t much to go on yet besides the basic little hero story but the idea of fixing a young boys trauma intrigues me. That can go in some interesting directions. The story sections looks really rough though and I’m not so sure it is intentional. All in all it is a very interesting project for an original game that doesn’t have an entire dev team behind it. While it may not offer much for more experienced players there is still a little something here for everyone. Personally I really hope it reaches the evolving character stretch goal because that sounds kind of cool. With some work it could be a lot like a less Mexican version of Guacamelee.