A Very Competent DKC Clone

[nbrown4]

I was originally going to post this as a review, but I think I hit the character limit, so it's going to be a discussion instead. This is a sort of review/overview, and while I may come off as being pretty critical here, the TLDR is that I enjoyed playing this game quite a bit, though there are a few things that would benefit from polishing/retooling. Anyway, buckle up.

Nikoderiko is self-described as being made in the style of "your most beloved classic platformers," but to be honest, I feel it's less accurate to say that it's inspired by games like Donkey Kong Country than it is to say that this game is simply trying to be Donkey Kong Country. First off, this game does get my recommendation. It was exactly what I expected it to be from the trailer, actually, even better. It was all the more shocking given that Donkey Country Tropical Freeze (the franchise's last original title) was released 10 years ago.

This is a straightforward precision platformer with a charming aesthetic and vibe and anyone who grew up playing either generation of DKC titles will instantly recognize their influence. There's a handful of Crash Bandicoot thrown in for good measure, but the game is far and away the closest thing to a DKC game I've ever played, even more so than Playtonic's Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair, which was made by former Rare employees. For $30 this will scratch the itch for anyone still waiting for Nintendo to get it together and make another DKC game. Nikoderiko offers about half as much content (28 levels total) for half the price.

Level and difficulty progression is fairly well paced, though I definitely found myself enjoying the latter half of the game considerably more as the level mechanics are increasingly diversified and I was pleasantly surprised by just how many ideas from various eras of DKC were used in this game. While I do recommend this game to fans of the franchise (and I'll dedicate some of this review to covering the similarities and borrowed elements), there are some cases where Nikoderiko misses the mark by a bit. It's nothing that kills the experience, but instead is more along the lines of "yeah wouldn't that have been cool?"

Gameplay

Niko and Luna

I want to get this out of the way first as it's unfortunately one of the biggest missed opportunities in the game. The game has two protagonists, Niko and Luna, and you can toggle between them on the overworld between levels. However, choosing between Niko and Luna is purely a cosmetic decision. Both characters play identically to each other and there's no gameplay reason to choose one over the other (similar to picking Crash or Coco in the new Crash games).

A core element of all DKC games is that taking damage not only brings you closer to dying, but that it affects your movement and your ability to navigate levels. In the original DKC trilogy it meant having to play as an entirely different character, made platforming more difficult in some cases, and potentially prevented you from accessing certain secrets. In the Returns titles, it again made platforming more difficult, and in the case of Tropical Freeze, your chosen partner may have an ability that you need to access certain parts of a level or other secrets.

By using a life/hits system that simply allows you to take multiple hits (up to three in total) with no consequences, the gameplay is less interesting. It's more similar to Crash in that regard, but in Crash, the default number of hits you can take is one, you have limited lives, and extra hits via masks are much less common compared to the life hearts you find in Nikoderiko.

Controls and Mechanics

As I mentioned, Nikoderiko is a precision platformer that largely plays as a 2D side scroller. There are occasional camera shifts either behind or in front of the player, but they're relatively few and far between and it's clear that the game was primarily designed for side scrolling rather than moving towards or away from the screen. It's in these rare occasions when the game shows some of its Crash Bandicoot inspiration, and don't worry, I'll document as much of that as I can.

2D Movement: You hold the stick left/right to move left/right, down to crouch, and down left/right to crawl in that direction.

3D Movement: The controls are what you’d expect for a 3D platformer with a Z Axis. Tilting the stick forward moves you forward away from the screen while tilting it backwards moves you towards it. You can still move left and right, but you aren’t able to crouch in this mode.

Your controller layout may vary, so I'll break down the button controls by function:

Jump: Use this button to jump. Holding it while jumping will cause you to jump higher than simply tapping it. You can defeat a wide variety of enemies and break boxes by jumping on them. Pressing the jump button while in mid-air causes your character to float, slowing your descent and allowing you to cover more distance horizontally. When in a 3D segment, jumping causes an indicator to appear underneath your character a la Crash 4 so you can see where you’re about to land.

Pressing the jump button while underwater will propel your character more quickly in the direction you're facing for a limited time.

Slide: Use this button to perform a slide that will propel your character forward in the direction you're facing. Similar to Crash Bandicoot, if you slide off of a ledge, you will continue to slide through the air and can jump out of the slide in order to achieve greater horizontal distance. The slide can be used to defeat certain enemies, break boxes, and lower your profile to slide under obstacles, hazards, etc. Pressing the slide button in mid-air will perform a ground-pound that stops your aerial movement and causes your character to immediately crash downwards into the ground below them. This can be used to defeat certain enemies and break obstacles to access secrets or alternate paths in levels. Holding left or right while ground-pounding will cause your character to immediately perform a slide in the direction you're holding after the pound has resolved.

Pressing the slide button underwater will propel your character forward in a corkscrew motion that can be used to defeat enemies underwater, but can be a bit difficult to control in tight spaces.

Pick Up: This button is dedicated to picking up the occasional object that you can throw at enemies or use to break barriers to access hidden areas. Press the button once to pick up an object and press it again to throw it. While holding an object, it will be positioned in front of your character and can be used as a shield to defeat incoming enemies.

Summon Mount: My least frequently used button, this is used to summon a mount that you can purchase using coins found in levels. Pressing it once pulls up a menu where you can choose between your desired mount, and pressing and holding will confirm your choice.

Mounts: In addition to the mounts you can summon, Nikoderiko has a wide variety of mounts that you organically encounter in levels. I won't list them all, but they add some much appreciated variety to the platforming experience.

Levels and the Overworld

The game is broken up into seven worlds with four stages in each world. You traverse an island with a giant mongoose shaped mountain a la Donkey Kong Island. You play through the four levels, defeat a boss, and the next world is opened up. Each level contains four letters that spell NIKO for you to collect, along with two hidden keys (won by completing bonus stages) and a single hidden purple gem.

At any point on the overworld, you can press the slide button to access a shop. Being a modern game, Nikoderiko does away with lives but still uses collectibles to guide players through levels to help them understand which way they're supposed to go. In this case, bananas have been exchanged for fireflies and little bottles that you collect. Rather than collecting 100 to get another try, you use them as currency to purchase game assets that you can view in a little gallery. These are a nice touch as the game has some charming designs and models, but with the game having only 28 levels, they definitely feel like a way to pad out play time while players pursue 100% completion. You can also find coins that are used to purchase mounts that you can call into levels to assist you.

This framework unfortunately is one of the game's weak aspects. Every single level contains exactly two bonus stages and one gem. Every world contains four levels and one boss. The lack of variety does lend a fairly formulaic feel to the game. The levels themselves and the different worlds are pretty well varied, but the approach you take to them will start to feel pretty repetitive. Returning to a level to 100% it wasn't difficult, and I would often blaze through them to grab anything that I missed. However, missing something has no consequences. To cite DKC2 and pretty much any Crash game as examples, collecting Krem Coins or breaking every box to unlock a gem were necessary to access hidden levels and unlock each game's true ending. There was more to it than simply getting 100% completion. In Nikoderiko, your gems and your keys don't unlock anything so putting in the effort to collect them feels a bit pointless since there's no real reward.

That said, playing the levels themselves for the first time is a lot of fun and there’s a lot of variety as well as a lot of level mechanics that are taken from DKC including but not limited to:

• Minecarts
  
• Underwater Levels
  
• Rocketbarrel Style Flying Levels
  
• Silhouetted Levels
  
• Auto-Scrolling Chase Levels
  
• Climbing Levels
  
• Levels with Light Based Mechanics

The bonus levels are also quite varied and range in difficulty from super easy to fairly. It’s definitely worth grabbing all of the keys at the very least so you can experience them all.

As for the bosses, they significantly improved in the latter half of the game in terms of both difficulty and mechanical design, which I greatly appreciated.

[nbrown4]

Presentation

The Story, Writing and Characters

As a 2D platformer, there’s not much story to speak of. After an intro cutscene, Niko and Luna are basically on a quest to recover some stolen treasure from the Cobrings. The cutscene plays a bit like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie and does enough to establish the motivation for the adventure. Niko and Luna are essentially just adventurers (and possibly a couple) who want their treasure back. Niko is a bit more happy-go-lucky and foolhardy while Luna is a bit sharper than he is.

Nikoderiko is full of small cutscenes and conversations between levels that do little to enhance the experience. Don’t get me wrong, having played games like Freedom Planet I realize that you can definitely have an involved narrative in a 2D platformer, however, Nikoderiko does not benefit from this decision. There’s a shopkeeper who really only appears when you visit the shop, and occasionally you interact with an owl wizard character who only ever appears in cutscenes and could be dropped from the game entirely. Other than that, Niko and Luna banter with each other occasionally and with some enemy characters as well.

The voice acting here is pretty mid and the dialog and humor are all pretty poor. I’d love a “Classic” mode where all of the voice acting and all of the between level scenes were removed, but at the very least you can skip these scenes by pressing a button. One thing also worth mentioning is that I feel like the level naming could use a bit of work. In the original DKC titles, levels used alliterative titles that alluded to the stage mechanics. Some were better than others, but here are a few examples:

• Coral Capers
  
• Stop & Go Station
  
• Torchlight Trouble
  
• Bumble B. Rumble
  
• Mine Cart Madness

The levels in Nikoderiko by comparison tend to be a bit more on the nose with their naming, or just fall flat entirely:

• Sacred Forest
  
• Darby’s Dam Rampage (Why not Darby’s Dam-page?)
  
• Dragon Chase
  
• Frogs and Frights
  
• Riptor’s Rage

There are others that are better or worse than these, and ultimately it’s not a huge deal, but just something I noticed.

Design and Visuals

Visually, Nikoderiko is quite an accomplishment for an indie game. It looks incredibly similar to the style used in DKC Returns and Tropical Freeze. Bright colors, defined shapes, and very detailed foregrounds and backgrounds bring the game to life. Enemies, objects, and Niko and Luna themselves are charmingly designed and rendered into the world and very little feels out of place. Honestly only the toad mount, and maybe the dinosaur, felt really out of place to me. Small details like animations for Niko and Luna wobbling at the edge of a platform or going into a dive when they’re jumping into water are excellent touches that show a level of care from the creators. The chef boss in particular has one of my favorite small details during his fight.

When it comes to level design in terms of visual variety, Nikoderiko is a bit of a DKC greatest hits. There are lush jungles, crumbling ruins, beaches and shipwrecks, reefs, snowy mountains, dark forests, factories, and more. Each of these levels is teeming with detail and a joy to look at. There are also levels that make use of light as a mechanic and even some that borrow the silhouetted look introduced in DKC Returns.

The Cobrings

The Cobrings (pronounced with a “cob” like “corn on the cob”) are Nikoderiko’s signature antagonists. To get it out of the way, yes, they are heavily reminiscent of the Kremlings from early DKC. That said, the Cobrings are also very charming, with snakes playing the natural enemy to Niko and Luna as mongooses. The Cobrings come in a wide variety of designs, ranging from standard grunts to hulking brutes. They’re dressed like scientists, miners, grunts, etc.with their leader Baron Grimbold (bald?) looking a bit like an evil pirate/circus ringmaster.

My only real complaint, if you can call it that, is that the Cobrings are snakes but they also have legs. I’ve imagined what they might look like just with big tails and I feel like the jury’s out on whether it would be an improvement or not.

The rest of the enemies are generally contextually relevant to the different worlds and all look appropriately cute. You’ve got crabs, porcupines, fish, and spiders to name a few.

Music

It would be easy to gush about David Wise and his pedigree as a composer for video game music, but honestly his soundtrack for Nikoderiko was somewhat unremarkable. That’s not to say that it’s bad, but this game is trying so hard to be DKC and I’m sure that David was asked to compose a soundtrack that was heavily inspired by his previous works. To be fair, many of the tracks he composed for DKC and DKC2 have been remixed and reused over and over. So it’s not to say that his music has gotten worse by any means, more so that he probably played it really safe with this one.

If you were to take the soundtracks of Nikoderiko and DKC Tropical Freeze, mix them into a playlist, and then ask someone to tell you which songs belonged to which game, you’d be pretty hard pressed to tell them apart. All that’s to say that the soundtrack is basically more of what David Wise does, atmospheric and environmental sound woven into some pleasant melodies. Sadly nothing that stuck out to me to the point that I looked it up to listen to it again, but nothing offensive either.

One thing that DID stick out to me however was the fact that there seemed to be only one track that played when you die. DKC2 is goated in my book for having 17 unique tracks that play when you die, each contextually relevant to the stage you were playing.

Also, it’s worth mentioning that the controversial vocal track played during the announcement trailer is nowhere to be found in the actual game.

The Part Where I Talk About Donkey Kong

Yeah, you all knew this was coming. This section is where I’ll painstakingly try and list all of the elements of this game that were lifted from/inspired by Donkey Kong Country. There will be some repeats here from earlier in the review, but I don’t want to skimp on this list:

• An island world map that looks like the main character’s head (DKC)
  
• A reptile enemy faction whose name ends in “ing” (DKC/2/3/etc.)
  
• Four collectible golden letters per stage (DKC/2/3/etc.)
  
• Animal mounts/buddies (DKC/2/3/etc.)
  
• A throwaway quest about getting back something that was stolen from you (DKC)
  
• A soundtrack by David Wise (DKC/2/3/etc.)
  
• Barrels that you can throw at enemies (DKC/2/3/etc.)
  
• Barrels that blast you around the stage (DKC/2/3/etc.)
  
• Climbable vines/ropes (DKC/2/3/etc.)
  
• A replica minecart stage (DKCR most mechanically similar)
  
• A replica rocketbarrel stage (DKCR most mechanically similar)
  
• Hidden bonus barrels (DKC/2/3/etc.)
  
• ”Destroy them All!” (DKC2)
  
• ”Collect the Stars!” (DKC2/3)
  
• An enemy factory area (DKC)
  
• Silhouetted stages (DCKR/TF)
  
• Enemies that disguise themselves as throwable objects (DKC2)
  
• Beehives! (DKC2)
  
• A bramble area that you navigate by flying (DKC2)
  
• Levels with enemies you can temporarily freeze (DKC Stop & Go Station)
  
• Levels that have lights that go out (DKC Blackout Basement)
  
• Avoiding crashing waves
  
• Jumping after rolling/sliding off a ledge
  
• Button mashing mini game at the end of the level (DKCR)
  
• Unnecessary co-op in a precision platformer (DKCR/TF

I’m sure there are more examples that I’m forgetting, but suffice it to say that Nikoderiko really wears its inspirations on its sleeve. Whether you consider it homage or derivative really comes down to personal taste, but I feel that the quality is there, so this game gets a pass from me for so boldly emulating some of my favorite games.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve made it this far, thank you! I’ll keep my conclusion brief. Nikoderiko: The Magical World is an incredible homage to the games I grew up playing and simultaneously to the games Nintendo themselves made to follow them up. If you enjoy vibey platforms, albeit a somewhat shorter one, this game is a worthy buy. It oozes polish and charm, and I hope to see more from VEA games in the future.

[Chibs MG]

Wow! Thank you for your work and the very detailed feedback. We'll make sure to share it with the team!

[ironharvest_pcdeluxeprofi]

Donkey Kong YES. That it is it