Akimi Village is here for the PS3. It marks Ninjabee’s (the developer of
Akimi Village) first release for the Playstation 3. Akimi Village from
the beginning looks very similar to Ninjabee’s own Kefling Games. Does
it improve on those games or is it just the closest to a port that
Ninjabee is allowed?
Akimi Village is a semi-god game that has
you gain resources to build buildings that let you refine your
resources, rinse and repeat. You’re not alone in this management sim.
You have a group of sea monkey looking creatures named the Akimi to help
you out. Just as in Keflings you can assign Akimi to cultivate
resources and then transfer them to either a refinery or to shop so you
buy new building pieces. Building of objects is fairly easy and
self-explanatory. You pick the newest blueprint and the game tells you
what color coordinated building piece you need from a store. The store
will also say that you need this many and have a light above all
building pieces that you need for a building. You then organize them
accordingly and boom the building find its shape.
Akimi are your Bros
Speaking more about the Akimi the main reason you are building all this
stuff is to help them get rid of the gloom. Gloom is what brought you
here as the main raccoon wants to see it removed from the village and
will only return you home until it is purified. The gloom makes any land
that it covers unusable and makes the Akimi it has its power over
useless. You are given seeds to plant in the land to help make it grow
and building some buildings will help this as well.
This is one of the bigger differences between Akimi Village and the Keflings games. The tone of both while light is decidedly different. Akimi Village is much more spiritual and darker than World of Keflings, Animaniacs kind of comedy. Akimi Village also has only one land to cultivate which keeps the focus more on one spot.
Moving onto more the mechanical differences there is very little
difference in controls but some features from World of Keflings are
surprisingly missing. The super keflings who carry building parts for
you did not make the transition. You cannot move houses and there is no
co-op whatsoever. Instead of using avatars you have a choice of boy or
girl to play as. I was really disappointed by the lack of co-op even if
it was just couch co-op.
The music again just like in the Kefling games is throwaway. You have
about 20 minutes of music for your 5 hour playthrough. I quickly started
listening to my own collection of music and podcasts. I don’t have a
huge problem because this is what these games do perfectly. Akimi
Village is a relaxing game you don’t have any enemies you just build and
grow.
There are some small things that are annoying. Such as Akimi will stop if you are in their way. The game makes upgrading buildings important but very only one building upgrade actually affected anything for me.
It is difficult to say what kind of audience Akimi Village has. Akimi Village is a very enjoyable game it just has a competitor that is made by the same developer. I can only really recommend Akimi Village if you own a PS3 and not a 360 as A World of Keflings is still a better game. The only way I could recommend Akimi Village to a 360 player is if you want more after finishing A World of Keflings.
This review is based on a final version of the game given to me as a code from NinjaBee for theReviewcast.com.