A World of Akimi
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.