Haimrik

Review

The country of Estria consists of four kingdoms, which were constantly at war with each other. Mind you, that was fairly much the norm in the Middle Ages. “What sort of event could reunite these four provinces,” wondered the King Udolf?  Unexpectedly, Estria was attacked by a larger army, which forced the four regions of Estria to fight shoulder to shoulder to repel the invader. However, that was not enough!  On the brink of defeat, King Udolf, led by one of his faithful servants, discovered a powerful new source of magic at the summit of a mountain - the magic of words! With this, they were able to create magical books that gave exceptional powers in battle.  They gave one book to each of the strongest warriors from the four provinces of Estria.  These soldiers became known as “The Word Warriors.” After the war, some of the kingdoms flourished, while others descended into poverty. In one of these poor kingdoms lives a young scribe named Haimrik, and this is his unbelievable story.

Haimrik is an action / adventure / puzzle game developed by Below the Game and published by 1C Company. In this game, you’ll be playing a young scribe who stumbles upon one of the magical books of words.

What an absolute gem this game is!  It is structured extremely well, the story line is superb, and each of the characters is finely detailed, from their personality traits to the fantastic cartoon illustrations.  I really like the fact that the storyline flows well, while still managing to keep the suspense around the identity of the bad guys as it progresses.  Another factor that enriches the experience of playing Haimrik is the dialogue; it leans towards black humour without being too obvious, which is spot on.

The gameplay has three aspects. The first one is the adventure. From the start, Haimrik will have to go to places, talk to people and figure out ways to get information or items from other characters within the location. The puzzles kicked in when Haimrik dives into the magical book of words by cutting his hand with his quill. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that he needs his own blood to access the book of words. The second aspect is the puzzles, most of which are set in three stages. Basically, Haimrik will appear on the top of your screen in between two towers. Between these towers, there are up to five floors, with words written on the front.  These words continue the adventure and are simultaneously the puzzles that you have to solve. Haimrik will be able to stand over words and activate an object to help him to complete the puzzle. For example, he might need to destroy a tower, and the only way to do it is by using a cannon. So, he will need to stand on the word cannon and activate it. The challenge is that you not only need to activate words in sequences, but you also need to take the activated item to merge with another one, in addition to fighting archers and swordsmen (the third aspect being the action factor), and overcoming various obstacles to move to the next phase. Just brilliant!

The boss’s fights are pretty much the same with more action; it will take some time to beat them, and it will indeed involve dragons more than once for good measure!

Splendid cartoons visuals. Good story-line with dialogue full of dark humour. The soundtrack is pretty good, and the controls are very responsive. The only negative I can see is the lack of options, apart from that, this game is a gem!