Giraffe and Annika. This is a 3D rhythm puzzle adventure by atelier mimina. At the time of the first announcement, the publisher was UNTIES, but it appears that the publisher was later changed to PLAYISM. The background of this game is about Anika, the girl with cat ears. One day, she woke up and found herself on the mysterious starlight island(Spica). What adventure is waiting for her?


In-game 3D and 2D graphics are in the right balance. This game uses Unreal Engine 4, which has a pretty good 3D character design. It's not awkward, it also goes well with 2D graphics. This allows players to venture more immersed in the game world. Story progress is delivered in a comic book(Manga) format with hand-drawn 2D graphics. It gives you the impression that you are watching and playing an animation movie game.

The game mood is like a comfortable fantasy fairy tale overall. The game delivers heartwarming things to the player. You are adventurous with a young girl full of curiosity. She is interested in everything and is always alive. As she explores the five worlds, she recovers her memories gradually. The game progress is somewhat linear but not boring. And the puzzles and rhythm difficulty gradually increases. The game itself is not well optimized, but it does not spoil the gameplay. The soundtrack goes well with the rhythm game, and the quality is good overall.


Giraffe and Annika. This is a pretty interesting 3D platformer that anyone can enjoy easily. Despite some glitches, this game pleases the player. The cat ears girl, Annika is pretty cute and the adventure with her is fun. The game is designed to start with something small and experience more and more. If you are looking for a fairy tale adventure, this game is for you. Recommended!

A really cute mash-up between 3D platformer and rhythm game. Featurewise it's nothing special, but the artstyle and comic sequences are pretty cute and well made. The music is fitting and I haven't encountered any bugs or problems during the time I've played. Also you play as a catgirl which is already amazing on its own.

EDIT:
Okay now that I have finished the story, this was an amazing game to experience. I loved every single second of Giraffe and Annika. Without spoiling the ending, it was very bittersweet and made me cry, but It also wrapped up the game very nicely. I just wish the game was a bit longer than about 5 hours if I'm being honest.

Been waiting a pretty long time to play this and my first couple hours have been very enjoyable so far. I got basically what I expected.

The trailer says it all- you're a cute catgirl running around a scenic island either fetching stuff, checking out objects, or running around in dungeons with rhythm game boss fights. The atmosphere is really serene and the music is too. It nails the vibe it's going for, which is an innocent, fairly low pressure adventure with a lot of fine details and wholesome moments to bring it all to life. You find collectibles, unlock art and costumes, gain abilities and items that let you progress--all very familiar elements executed without much friction. It's all in the small details and moments of character interaction that keep you interested in seeing what else is around the corner.

Gameplay is mostly simple adventuring, but the rhythm game boss fights are what separates this game from the rest. I've done 3 of them so far, on normal and hard difficulty. It might feel a bit strange at first, but the trick is to hit the button when the circle lights up and not when it looks like she's soonest able to hit the "notes" with her staff. After a few tries, you won't really need to look and can do it on intuition. The songs are each a step of difficulty up above the previous--hard mode on the 3rd song was pretty tricky! So far, they've been pretty memorable and I can tell I'm gonna be sad there's only 5 songs in the end.

The secret sauce here is that the main developer worked on Gitaroo Man (PS2), Gitaroo Man Live (PSP), Osu Tatake Ouendan 1+2 (DS), and Elite Beat Agents (DS.) And the music composer worked on Gitaroo Man and Gitaroo Man Live as well. He also founded Sonica Instruments, music software for Japanese instruments like taiko drums, shamisen, etc. That's pretty good pedigree for the rhythm action sections! They definitely have that cinematic vibe that all the games mentioned above have, albeit not as crazy since this is a two person team vs. the huge teams those games had.

Edit: This was a paragraph about some graphics issues that needed patching, but they knocked that out within 24 hours of the game coming out with patch 1.01. Yay!

TL;DR - wholesome and comfy adventure, rhythm game boss fights that elevate the whole experience quite a bit thanks to developer pedigree, and had some day 1 issues that got patched.



Despite the issues, I give it a 914 out of 10.

+Adorable to the very core, the game's world brings warmth and joy to my heart!

-Lacks certain animations, like taking the ladder up. Such details make a huge impact on immersion.

Fun enough to play for the most part, but do be aware that the game can be a bit annoying.

Sometimes when doing the rhythm game fights, you'll have it where you won't go all the way, but will instead stop partway. Another issue with fights is timing as the way the fights are set up make timing harder to judge - the fights would work better in first person VR view than third person flat screen view. Even then, there is a reason why rhythm games typically use linear paths. Also, same color lights as the background does not help. These factors and a few others combined (such as being unable to pause mid-song (if you pause, you have to restart from the beginning)) can really make the fights annoying.

Also note that the game is full of invisible walls. Annoying to die because there was an invisible wall when logically, you should have made a jump, but in reality, you can't make the jump because of an invisible wall. Similarly, later areas have falling tiles and this can be frustrating as sometimes a tile will fall before you've stepped on it because you landed close to it.

You'll most likely run two or more saves, splitting first at the point of no return - there is a semi-hidden questline that must be completed before this point, but this can take some time, so you may wish to do this questline separately if you are not confident in your time.

The next point where you might want to make a separate save is right after the point of no return. This is a good point to save as this can be another point where you may end up taking more time than intended.

Finally, you can also make a final separate save after obtaining the final chest related picture (#30) as there is a save point shortly after. This lets you choose to backtrack and complete everything on one save file and rush the ending on the other. This will allow you to minimize the amount of replaying needed. (You can also set your date to Dec 24 before starting the game to further minimize replaying).

The story is mostly predictable and several clues are given to you right at the start, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The music is fine, especially in the important parts.

A bit of a jarring issue is that the first cutscene uses both 2d and 3d in one panel, so it looks somewhat off.

Not too bad! I do have a couple problems though. It's a game that really holds your hand through the course of its run; it's way too easy to heal yourself, and dying doesn't even really have any consequences. It's also a little unpolished - some of the lighting can look rough and the physics feel kinda clunky. Also some technical hiccups, the biggest one being I've saved my game at the last save spot and can't seem to get back to the main hub world to finish up any of the small stuff like collecting the meowsterpieces, I'm just forced into finishing the game. And a couple other nitpicks, like the boats going too slow, and also I wish there was a button that just let you store food in your bag rather than having to go through the dialogue box each time. But one thing I love about indie games is you can tell when they're a product of love. I can see the effort and charm they tried to put in. I think the story is lovely. The environment is endearing. The rhythm tap bosses are fun. Annika and Lilly are cute. I can tell the devs tried, and I appreciate it. It held me through to the end just fine.

pretty cute, if slightly janky adventure that isn't going to blow anyone out of the water in terms of features, but is enjoyable and cute enough to warrant a try for those interested.

The story is a bit confusing, it's all told in Manga cutscenes, and then some cutscenes in game as well.
I haven't obtained an attack, but after about an hour - I got a jump move ( lol )
Some plot involving collecting magical crystals - and a few dungeons spattered throughout - and that's the jist of Giraffe and Annika.
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The main take away is everythign is CUTE!
the enemes, the uI, the characters - all flipping adorable.

The one VERY standout feature is how battles play out.

They're rhythm games, lol.
You can see one on the store page, it's a simple setup- but fun nonetheless.

The price seems a bit steep, but after messing around with the game pre-release and post rel;ease, it's evident a lot of love and effort went into this. ( they couldve just slapped the 3D anime ARGG asset pack, but this is UNreal Engine )

Recommended if you want a light hearted romp through famialiar territory with a music game twist for combat.

If you have young kids, this might be perfect for them, the difficulty isn't outrageous, the puzzles are not simple, but easy enough for most people to figure out.

Got a duaghter that likesd cute things and games? This might be for her.

I'm enjoying this game a lot! It kinda reminds me the old games I used to play on N64 but with better graphics and sounds. In my current run I'm not encountering many difficulties, healing items and saves are abundant therefore the gameplay isn't so challenging, since backtracking and exploring are the main features there's so much to do and discover! Rhythm game sections are also a nice touch. I still have to finish the story but from what I'm experiencing, it's a heartwarming one.
In the end, this is a nice adventure game for everyone!

edit: okay, the ending.., made me cry a lot,,,

Giraffe is a fun game in general but the control become annoying around the ending. The story is interesting but not entirely for children. The graphics are good. I really loved all the 2d illustrations that told the story. The music rhythm fight isn't so great. I mean, even on easy it unforgiving on the timing. The music is great however. The control is something bad at time. The jumping isn't precise. Which became very bad in the last 2 levels. Swimming is slow and fuzzy. I wasn't always impress with some level designs, very unequal. I like the collecting stuff. I give it a 68%. A game for children and maybe a bit for adult. Sadly the controls are missing at times, but overall enjoyable for the story.

This developer truly understands the most important thing about being cute and funny, it's the heart.