The gaming industry has become so vast that there is a constant influx of new games being released all the time. Aside from the larger AAA titles that instantly gain recognition, there are hundreds of indie developers that are creating games with the hope that their small game will be fun and unique enough to gain notoriety. This was the goal of Cogg Games Ltd with their release of Eekeemoo: Splinters of the Dark Shard, a game based on a comic of the same name. Unlike the graphic novel however, there’s nothing enjoyable about it.

You play as the titular character, Eeekeemoo, a dual knife (possibly sword) wielding Eskimo as he journeys forth to save his four friends from the evil Dark Shard. There are three companions to rescue across your typical and uninspired fantasy adventure landscapes: poisoned forest, a fiery volcano, a snowy mountain, and a dark shadowy land. As you rescue each of your friends, they become a playable character to help you solve puzzles and defeat endless waves of enemies. At least, that’s what they’re suppose to do. Unfortunately in Eeekeemoo, they serve as more of an annoying hindrance than a help.

Eekeemoo suffers from dreadful controls and abysmal hit detection. When playing as Eekeemoo, you swing your blades in a weird flailing motion, but your hits will only register every so often. This leaves you with only the option of shamelessly button mashing your way though the entire game. There is a power move, but it takes a while to charge and with the hit detection being so poor, it’s not worth it to attempt. Even when you do finally land one, it doesn’t do much more in the way of damage than your standard attack. Dodging is also frustrating since it doesn’t actually start the move until about a full second or two after you press the button. So that really only leaves you with three controls: run, pitifully jump, and wildly thrash your weapons around. Not exactly the most engaging gameplay out there.

The graphics in Eekeemoo look cute at first, but you’ll quickly realize that there’s no depth in the surroundings or any real variation in the enemies. In every level, the undead are colored differently, but on the same character model. So you essentially have nothing more than wave after wave of beating back the same exact onslaught of enemies throughout the entire game. The bosses are a little more varied, but only slightly. You’re still trying to fight them in the same way, only they’re larger than the standard undead and a little faster. The levels have no decent textures to make the world stand out and everything looks muddied. This can make it confusing to navigate at times, especially since there’s no map to speak of.

The sound in Eekeemoo is where this game struggles the most (believe it or not). There’s no voice acting, only poor sound effects and even those are limited. You can hear the character’s footsteps, bizarre occasional groaning in the background from the other monsters presumably, and a dull thudding sound as you and your enemies hit each other. Other than that, there is only the background “music” which consists of a few trumpeting notes played every so often for the entire duration of the game. I was shocked that each new area didn’t have it’s own score. Shocked and disappointed because believe me, the background noise gets really old really fast.

I was let down with Eekeemoo: Splinters of the Dark Shard, because on the surface it looked like it was going to be a fun and quirky game. Unfortunately, there was nothing below the surface except for some exceptionally bad gameplay and lazy character designs. It seems like they had a good idea of what they wanted to do and then got bored with it and quickly pushed a game out. There are lots of Kickstarter success stories, but Eekeemoo: Splinters of the Dark Shard isn’t amongst them.

 

Graphics: 3.0 All the enemies look the same and the environments have no textures or substance.	Gameplay: 2.5 Rough controls with awful hit detection and cumbersome character animations.
Sound: 1.5 Poorly limited sound effects with annoying repetitive background music.	Fun Factor: 4.0 Wants to be a fun action adventure platformer but fails miserably. If you don’t get overly frustrated with the controls, then you’ll become quickly bored with the lack of enemy variety.
Final Verdict: 3.0

Reviewed on Switch.
Eekeemoo: Splinters of the Dark Shard is available now on Switch, PC, Xbox One, and PS4.
A copy of Eekeemoo: Splinters of the Dark Shard was provided by the publisher.