Armikrog Clay, Puzzles and a Talking Dog

Every character, wall and creature in Armikrog is real clay, animated frame by frame. Nothing here is textured to look handmade; it actually is. That gives the fortress a warmth no rendered world can fake: fingerprints in the walls, squashy little movements, cutscenes that play like a very strange short film. The characters come from Doug TenNapel, the artist behind Earthworm Jim, and the team includes the sculptors who built The Neverhood. You can see the craft in every room, and lingering to just look around is a big part of the pleasure.

Tommynaut does the heavy lifting, but Beak-Beak, his blind alien dog, is the one who talks, sniffs out what matters and gets fed special seeds that let him fly. Switching between the two is the heart of the puzzles: one of them reaches places and does things the other cannot. The fortress itself is the puzzle. Signs and symbols you spot early on will matter later, so keeping notes pays off, and the mystery of what this place is unfolds as you push deeper into its towers. It is a short game, a few hours, so treat it as one rich evening rather than a long haul.