Akimi Village is a new offering from NinjaBee and their first on the Ps3, the same developer for A Kingdom for Keflings/A World of Keflings that was released on the 360.
Akimi Village has a lot in common with the previous titles. You start out as one of two characters (a girl or a boy) and your job is to help this weird, yet funny, raccoon restore this desolate land back to it’s former glory. The way you do that is to gather bamboo/wood/stones/etc. to build various workshops, with the help of little
Akimis (Keflings). As you build things you gain culture, which you’ll need to help restore more of the map.
The game feels very much like it’s predecessors. The only real differences are the overlying eastern theme and the new mechanic of having to spread out and restore desolate parts of the landscape, which have special tools or materials that you can’t get until you do. Other than that, it’s the standard formula of picking up Akimis and taking them to materials you want them to gather and having them run shops, while you follow blueprints to build new ones. Being as I was a fan of the earlier games, I have to say that this game is still just as addicting and fun. There’s not much in the way of a story other than what I stated, so basically if you
want to have fun building things, you’ll probably have fun here.
One thing I did notice lacking was the graphic quality. It seems as though they didn’t make an attempt to improve them from previous games. Everything looks very simplistic with jagged edges. Now note that the graphic quality doesn’t really take anything away from the gameplay, but it’s just something that I feel would
have made the game stand out a bit more, especially being as it’s not the first game they’ve made. Maybe I’m
being picky, but really that’s one of the only hits I can give this game.
If some remember the previous A Kingdom for Keflings, you’ll remember the music that played in a neverending,
never changing loop. I actually couldn’t stand it after about 10 minutes, so I would end up muting the TV. I have say that it’s not the case in this game. The music has an eastern feel to it which has a nice, relaxing feeling. Now, it’s still played in a loop, but it didn’t get old to me. Although it would still be nicer to have more
variety with it, but it’s ok as is. The sound effects on the other hand are simple, standard fare. The only
real ones that stand out are of the Akimi, which are adorable (as my wife would say).
Overall, the easiest way to look at this game is if you liked the Keflings games, you’ll like this one. If you haven’t played either of those games before then I would say that this game would be the one I would start with. You have more of a feeling of an obtainable goal in this one, which is what I felt was lacking a bit in the others.
