The story of Giraffe and Annika is one filled with allusions to a greater meaning despite starting in the most generic of ways. After waking on a mysterious island with all her memories gone, Annika is met by a boy named Giraffe. After explaining that she must help find and collect three lost star fragments the pair set off on an adventure to uncover a greater mystery.
I could say more but it would be unfair to explain exactly what is going on as it becomes a much more touching experience once all the threads begin to come together.
Heaven’s Above
Part-platformer and part-rhythm game, Giraffe and Annika is much more interesting than initially expected. The open world hub is bright and breezy with a few neat little puzzles and hidden items strewn around.
There are a few locked off areas that become available as you progress through the dungeons or complete quests for the islands residents. It’s a compact space, but it’s filled with interesting things to do in between the platform heavy main meat of the game.
None of the it takes too much time either but they are nice little distractions that serve mainly to grow the story. Ruminating on them once the game was complete also made it obvious that they had a lot more meaning than what was shown at surface level.
Underworld Undercooked
Unfortunately, these parts were far more interesting than the dungeons you will explore. There are five in total that are loosely based on the elements and end in an unconventional boss battle. These are mostly linear platforming sections with some light puzzling thrown in. The plaforming sections are serviceable but barely challenging despite some odd collision detection and physics.
A quick trip off the beaten path will often lead you to a chest with a collectable but these are well signposted enough that they can’t be missed. In fact this is probably one of the biggest problems overall – it’s more than happy to hold your hand the whole way through and presents very little challenge.
For example – ghostly enemies litter the path but can’t be interacted with as there is no traditional combat, all you need to do is run away. Healing stones are everywhere so if you’ve been unlucky enough to take a hit, you’ll be fighting fit again 10 seconds later. The thing most likely to kill you is water, but even then death is inconsequential as you’ll respawn with zero penalties.
Dance, Magic Dance
The boss battles are by far the most interesting twist! Rather than following traditional gaming tropes, everything turns into a rhythm game. Three difficulty options are available with each increasing the amount of beats you need to hit in order to defeat the enemy.
It is a rather simplified version of a rhythm game though as you are only expected to move to the left or right whilst using one dedicated button to hit the attacks back. Don’t come into this expecting Dance Dance Revolution levels of complexity. Successfully smacking an attack back reduces the enemy health bar whilst missing them deals damage but doesn’t actually lead to anything dying.
This actually fits quite well with the overall narrative, so it doesn’t feel out of place. Completing a battle also gives a results screen where you are rated on your performance should you be inclined chase high scores or in game achievements. The music is upbeat and fits the theme of each area you visit which was a nice touch. You probably won’t find yourself dancing along to it though.
Visually Mixed
Graphically, things are a bit of a mixed bag. With it being on Nintendo Switch, expect things to look a little blurry, especially when played handheld. Textures are low quality, geometry is very basic and the anime character models look nice enough but clash a little with the more realistic surroundings of the island.
Added to this are some really clunky animations, in fact some animations appear to be outright missing such as when the game fades to black when climbing a ladder. Cutscenes also aren’t animated and instead play out on comic book style panels with hand drawn 2D character models set on backgrounds which use the in game world. I get that this is a budget title delivered by a relatively small team but it feels lacking in some areas.
An Unexpected Journey
The mention of dungeons early on had me thinking Giraffe and Annika was going to be an epic RPG like adventure but it has a short runtime. Don’t expect to be playing this for any longer than around six hours. Well, unless you get the game breaking bug I did.
As I was getting ready to start the trip to the final dungeon, everything turned grey. I still had HUD elements but nothing else. It seemed the game was still playing in the background as I could hear the music and sound effects of running around but nothing else worked.
After turning the game off and rebooting it, I loaded the save and again, a grey screen. A second reboot then saw the save corrupt and all progress was lost. I was not a happy bunny and this put a real dampener on the experience.
Despite lacking some finesse, the real reason to play Giraffe and Annika is the story and the characters. Replacing traditional combat with a rhythm game initially felt weird but it’s set in a weird world. Sure it can look a little bland and it’s incredibly easy but that shouldn’t stop you from experiencing a touching tale. Hopefully they can find out what caused the bug and fix it because I did enjoy my time here.