Disclaimer: I received One Eyed Kutkh on the Nintendo Switch free of charge from developer Baba Yaga Games and publisher Sometimes You as part of Indie Gamer Chick's #IndieSelect. The game was received without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played, shared, and talked about through social media channels. All the words and screenshots here unless otherwise noted are my own and were not provided or given by any outside parties.
One Eyed Kutkh is a short point-and-click game in a science fiction setting that is apparently based off of "fairy tales of the Far North." By short, I mean that the first time I played it, it took me between 45 mintues and one hour to complete, and even then I was not sure that I had actually completed the game and did not run through a very elaborate tutorial. By the end, I was ready to get to the meat of the game, only to discover that I had in fact played the game in its entirety.
There are a couple of draws to One Eyed Kutkh (OEK here on out because I keep forgetting how to spell "Kutkh"), is the art style. Colors are vibrant, almost to the point of being childish, but OEK never feels like it is marketed or geared towards a preteen audience. The other draw is that there is no tutorial or explanation for how to do anything, which admittedly confused me a bit. When I opened the game, there was a gear icon, which I took to mean settings. I was then brought to the screen here, and took the symbols to be similar to those found on a PlayStation controller. It was not until the Kutkh kept glaring at me and its ship crashed that I realized I was not in the settings screen, but actually playing the game.
That was when I fully realized that OEK does not have any dialogue or text to tell you what to do. Instead it uses character animation and message bubbles to point/direct the player in the right direction. Also having a limited move set means there is very little chance in walking past something or missing something hidden on screen. There were some non-story related objects I found I could interact with, like the tree object surrounding the Kutkh and their spaceship. But really, OEK operated almost more like an interactive story with point-and-click elements than what you would expect from a game like Thimbleweed Park, or Shadowgate.
I could see some people balking at the $4.99 price tag on the Switch, considering how short the game is, similar to how people reacted to the original price of Gone Home and that you could speed run the game in under a minute if you felt so inclined. On Steam, the game is only $2.99, so on the Switch you are paying a bit of a premium. That being said, I cannot honestly say what a "reasonable" price would be since I personally will typically only buy games when they are on sale, but this is a line of thought for its own article. I have also found there to be no replay-ability when it comes to the story, but I think it might be possible to find more things to either click on or have one of the two playable characters or the other citizens of the world react to. However, we do reread books even when we know the stories, so there is that too.
What I came away with from One Eyed Kutkh was that I felt good, pure and simple. It was like I played a game that made me feel warm. I played a game that did not require dexterous fingers, or parts of my brain that I have reserved for games like Earthworms or the Professor Layton series. What I played was relaxing game that requires no knowledge in any language, told through actions. The music too, composed by blinch, was atmospheric, beautiful, and only helped to enhance the artwork and storytelling in the game.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
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