Adventure Gamers - Forums

Karlok - 30 October 2022 06:59 AM

Whenever I think of the Neverhood I always remember the many great aspects and the fun, easy puzzles, and forget about the hard and/or bad ones.

I found The Neverhood’s puzzles much more logical (or self-explaining) this time around. I’m more patient and experienced nowadays, and there are hints and even full solutions to the puzzles hidden in the world of Neverhood. Explore, explore and explore - that’s the key.

And ponder about it all, of course.

I was disappointed that reading everything in the Hall of Records didn’t help in the room with the statues at all. For some reason I thought that HoR had helped me solve a puzzle in there the first time I had played the game.

But I still think reading the history of Father, Quater and his seven sons was fun.
Btw, did anyone else recognise a H.C. Andersen’s story in one of the writings on the wall?

zobraks - 18 November 2022 04:38 AM

Karlok - 28 October 2022 05:37 AM

I recommend watching The Making of The Neverhood on youtube. ... I read that it’s supposed to be included on the official disk, but not on my version. Maybe a later edition or the Skull Monkeys disk, does anybody know?

Do you have this button?

Oh boy. Shame on me. I’m going to steal your gif.

PS: I will post my final thoughts about the game later today.

zobraks - 18 November 2022 04:57 AM

I found The Neverhood’s puzzles much more logical (or self-explaining) this time around. I’m more patient and experienced nowadays, and there are hints and even full solutions to the puzzles hidden in the world of Neverhood.

Now we know what this animation is about. But what to call it: a mysterious prediction, a Biblical vision or more prosaically a hint players are not supposed to understand until they don’t need it anymore?

I must confess that I didn’t read this thread too much - I was afraid of spoilers and there wasn’t enough time. Now that I finished the game it’s time to read the thread from the beginning and respond to some intriguing observations others have made.

chrissie - 30 October 2022 09:32 AM

Later on, I did find Willie’s hints helpful but I think this feature’s reliability probably varies depending on what order you do things in?

Willie’s hints are tailored to the situations you’re presently in. If you’re stuck with a puzzle and there is a hint for it in the game world Willie would pinpoint that (in his own way). That’s my experience, and I checked the mailbox from almost any point in the game I have saved. I did it after finishing the whole game, just for fun.

It’s interesting that once you reach Klogg’s castle there are no more letters from Willie, but you get (junk) mail from Klogg:

(to be continued)

eriktorbjorn - 31 October 2022 02:29 AM

As an aside, as I recall it this is one of those games where every scene is hard-coded, rather than working from an interpreted script. Which means it can work perfectly well in almost every respect, and still be buggy in places.

It’s pieces of information like this that make a playthrough special. I like to learn more about games (specially if a game is one of my favourites).

Karlok - 02 November 2022 06:09 AM

Nobody else mentioned having trouble with the part after the sound puzzle

Would you please remind me which part it was we were supposed to have trouble with.

Speaking of trouble, is the fly-creature in the hole in the ceiling of the floor of the House of Whistles *whew! - that was a mouthfull* (the hole that opens when you pull a string hanging from the ceiling) relevant for the gameplay in any way, or is it just a red herring?
I completely forgot about it.

Karlok - 02 November 2022 06:09 AM

And nobody mentioned Willie’s story on the tapes

That’s one of the charms of The Neverhood that is missing when you play it for the second (or the 17th) time. I still remember having a wonderful time discovering the background story of the game, the story about Hoborg’s land and his destiny. Too bad you can have that treat only once in a lifetime (if you don’t get struck by amnesia between the playthroughs, that is).

I just LOVE the way the game creators chose to tell Willie’s story. The way a player gets the last of the three keys (which he’s sure he’s bound to find somewhere) is also magnificent (being quite unexpected).

Karlok - 02 November 2022 06:09 AM

Willie’s story on the tapes, which I personally find much more fun than TenNapel’s version of the Old Testament.

That’s like saying, “Drinking cold beer is more fun than getting impaled.”

Veovis - 02 November 2022 08:30 AM

I had Klaymen burp (and more…) for minutes by letting him eat three of those fruits from the tree close to the monster cave.

I also made Claymen help himself with fruit, and didn’t stop until he belched for a couple of minutes too.
I always try such things in a game until I get a repeated response. Many times there’s stuff you need and you don’t get it at first, but have to persevere and click as many times as a game designer wanted you to click.

Doom - 02 November 2022 11:34 AM

Yes, it’s a sort of an egg from what I remember, for the sake of listening to various unhealthy sounds. As a matter of fact, I recall how it happened during my first playthrough, I didn’t know you could skip cutscenes, thought I broke the game, panicked and switched off my PC.

The thing is, you cannot stop the belching cutscenes by pressing space bar when you click on the tree the first three times. After that you enter a new cycle of three responses (the short, the slightly longer, and the one that lasts about minute and a half) and then you can skip the cutscenes.
I just tried it.
That’s a devious game design, indeed.

That was definitely a world-class burp!

Veovis - 18 November 2022 08:04 AM

I have two games that seem to be related to The Neverhood. Armikrog and Skullmonkeys (Playstation game). Are those any good and do any of them connect to the original game?

Story-wise Skullmonkeys is a direct sequel, we take the role of Klaymen who has to defeat Klogg once again. Claymation cutscenes are just as awesome and funny as ever, Terry Scott Taylor’s soundtrack is magnificent. And that’s basically all the games have in common. Skullmonkeys is your basic console 2D platformer with a rather boring and repetitive level design (especially compared to Eathworm Jim) and clunky controls which make it a rather frustrating experience. But, surprisingly, it got good reputation among PS gamers, and generally it’s more famous than The Neverhood I think. I beat it back in the day because of my love for The Neverhood, but today I’d rather rewatch videos on Youtube.

Armikrog is only a spiritual successor made because TenNapel wasn’t able to acquire the rights to The Neverhood from EA. The story is different, protagonists are different (we now have two of them, a Klaymen-like silent adventurer and his talkative dog with some special functions). The game has a similar clay presentation with interconnected rooms to explore, even wall cars and some other features make a return. But the world feels more claustrophobic and looks somewhat cheaper and less imaginable. There are many repetitive elements, including same rooms and mechanical puzzles reused again and again, there’s a surprising lack of humour, wacky characters and fun in general.

I think there were only like 3 clay cutscenes in the whole game, the rest were replaced with still images and some narrator telling a story. All in all, a very budget release and a lack of new ideas. I played it as soon as it was made available to the KS backers, it was VERY rough, buggy and unfinished which added to the frustration, but I think it was patched later, so maybe you’ll have a better playtime. It’s not bad bad, just not The New Neverhood people were expecting.

zobraks - 18 November 2022 09:48 AM

The thing is, you cannot stop the belching cutscenes by pressing space bar when you click on the tree the first three times. After that you enter a new cycle of three responses (the short, the slightly longer, and the one that lasts about minute and a half) and then you can skip the cutscenes.
I just tried it.
That’s a devious game design, indeed.

Wow, they are even more cruel than I thought! And I didn’t bother to check if the skip button works this time around, because I also wanted to listen to the whole burping soundtrack just for the sake of it It’s things like this you really miss in Armikrog.

I have played Armikrog (I’d play anything related to The Neverhood) and my impressions of the game are very much like Doom’s, except I don’t remember it being buggy (it must’ve been a polished version). As far as I can remember (it was seven years ago) the gameplay was flawless and I liked it. The puzzles in Armikrog were harder, but don’t take my word for it.

It would be neat to replay it now, after finishing The Neverhood, to see how it compares to its predecessor.

Karlok - 02 November 2022 01:03 PM

The game’s very explicit warning that you can die should be enough.

For some people it’s only an incentive to go for a dive :

Karlok - 07 November 2022 07:25 AM

My favorite puzzle is the radio (so much fun to listen to everything)

Due to some unfortunate circumstances I have played the wall car driving sequence with sound off. I thought that what you learn in a screen with radio on the wall of the drained lake is a position of the arrow on radio’s scale, so I missed the nature of the puzzle and had much trouble with it until I started to listen. And I was even familiar with Willie’s hint (which I lifted while trying to get all his letters for the sake of completeness):

Karlok - 07 November 2022 07:25 AM

and my least favorite one the symbols you have to write down and enter in some terminal to open a door. The twist is clever (I’ll give you that, Mr TenNapel) but it’s a mean little puzzle and it took me ages and some saving/restoring to figure it out. I’m curious to know how other people feel about this one.

There are strange symbols in the gun puzzle and in the secret orange door puzzle, and my biggest problem was to figure out which symbols go with which puzzle. It took me some time to realise that symbols from the red terminal next to the gun have nothing to do with aiming the gun. After that it was much easier and the puzzle became quite straightforward once I found the very similar terminal in the Orange world. Then it took me some more time to comprehend the meaning of the same sound signal occurring with two different symbols, but I got it right. It’s a great puzzle if you manage to solve it on your own, and at the end of the day I liked it.

Karlok - 07 November 2022 07:25 AM

I love The Neverhood Theme, played during the credits. Always makes me smile. Listened to it 3 times already.

The Neverhood soundtrack is one of only a few adventure game soundtracks that I have. Recently I’m listening to it incessantly.

Sorry, RL problems. Will have to post my comments later.

Take your time, I’m not going anywhere.