Neverhood 2000

Rating:
Summary: My favorite game OF ALL TIME!
Review: "The Neverhood" is a great game. My family got it a little while back when I was 6 or 7 years old. I started playing it when I was around 8 years old, and really loved it. It's a nice, challenging game-everything is beautifully sculpted with clay-with lots of puzzles and something exciting around every corner...and interesting in every turn.

In this game, you are played as Klaymen, a clay person that walks around trying to solve puzzles. You soon find out that you're trying to save Hoborg (the creator of the Neverhood), who lost his crown from Klogg, the evil villain of the Neverhood. Your destination is to get to the castle, to save Hoborg. You do this by solving puzzles; they open doors, close doors, escape places, teleport yourself, take a car, which at the end you'll be brought to the castle, where you try to save the history of the Neverhood.

In the Beginning, you solve great puzzles, such as the "H puzzle", slaying a monster, start collecting all 20 tapes (you collect them throughout the game), trying to match sounds and music, walking down a looong hallway with the history of the Neverhood written on the walls, shooting a cannon, draining a big lake. If you need any help, your friend Willie will send you mail in your mailbox (located where you started the game, go down the ladder).

In the Middle, things get a little more complicated. You're in a lake, and you're in a room, which has a radio, which you need to turn to the right channel to open the door. You shrink yourself, make yourself big again, use these "teleporters", teleport yourself onto a clump of land, and collide the two halves (one of which you were on at the Beginning of the game) of the Neverhood together, give the mousie his cheese, and shoot Robot Bil (with the cannon at the lake) in the head.

In the End, you're in the castle. You need to get the 20th tape, find 3 keys, and stick them into the castle door. At the end, it runs into a stunning climax-you'll have to see it for yourself! I'm not tellin' you the ending! :)

Rating:
Summary: The only game I ever finished
Review: I loved this game. I must admit, I couldn't finish it without help from the website, but it's the only one that I really wanted to play whenever I had the time. I've tried Myst (took too long) and other games (Lost in Time, etc). And I also played Carmen Sandiego when it first came out, but The Neverhood had sly humour, problems easy enough to solve but not too easy, and funky music. I'm 55 by the way, so I think it's a game anyone can enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: The only game I ever finished
Review: I loved this game. I must admit, I couldn't finish it without help from the website, but it's the only one that I really wanted to play whenever I had the time. I've tried Myst (took too long) and other games (Lost in Time, etc). And I also played Carmen Sandiego when it first came out, but The Neverhood had sly humour, problems easy enough to solve but not too easy, and funky music. I'm 55 by the way, so I think it's a game anyone can enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: the coolest game
Review: The neverhood is realy wierd but very cool its got strange music and odd puzzels its got humor too.
I played it and beat it but I needed some help. the graphics
are a bit fuzzy but its cool all the same. You get to travel through strange worlds, battle wierd creatures, teleport yourself to other places, shrink yourself, pilot a giant robot
and a lot more. Great game, buy it!

Rating:
Summary: Grainy graphics fix
Review: The other posts pretty much sum everything up, I purchased this game back when it was in the stores, I just had to play a game done completely in claymation, it turned out awesome....but remember, this game came out in '96 and the computer systems of that time weren't that great(the P-II had not even come out yet!) so this game was designed around 256 colors.....change your colors to this BEFORE you play, everything will look MUCH better!

Rating:
Summary: "The Neverhood" is good, but "Neverhood 2000" never came out
Review: When I was first shopping for a used copy of The Neverhood, I was confused by the page you're reading now; it says "Neverhood 2000 by SouthPeak Interactive," and I knew that the original game was released in 1996 by DreamWorks. Was this a sequel that I should also be looking for? I did some research, and found out that in 2000 SouthPeak was going to release a newly polished version of the old game, using higher-resolution photography that wouldn't look so grainy. Unfortunately, they never released it. The reviewers here, including me, have all played the original game, The Neverhood.

Now that that's cleared up...The Neverhood is a unique point-and-click adventure game done entirely in claymation. You guide a placid clay person named Klaymen around a brightly-colored world with very few other creatures in it, solving puzzles and slowly unraveling the story of how this world was created, what happened afterward, and what Klaymen must do to save it. While you're in a puzzle room, you have a third-person view of Klaymen and the objects around him. While you're moving Klaymen between rooms across the clay landscape or having him operate a machine, you have a first-person view through his eyes.

All the while this crazy music is playing --- lots of weird twanging noises and mumbly nonsense lyrics, but really catchy songs. The soundtrack by Terry Taylor --- who apparently is a "Christian music" artist most of the time --- was actually released as a separate CD, and I intend to pick it up one of these days...

Most of the puzzles in this game are pretty strange, relying on abstract visual and other associations; I had to take notes on a few of them in order to keep everything straight. There are several places where you do something that only affects an area far away, so you have no idea what you've done until you happen to walk by and notice it. There's one seriously complicated puzzle that I solved by thinking about a long story that you get to read at one point in the game. When I was done I looked up some solutions online to see if they took the same approach --- they didn't, not at all, but hey, my solution worked...See what your results are!

Hardcore adventure gamers may dislike this game for being so illogical and quirky...but it's full of charm and highly original style, and almost anyone can play it. For me, it was definitely worth the high prices that used copies now go for.

Rating:
Summary: "The Neverhood" is good, but "Neverhood 2000" never came out
Review: When I was first shopping for a used copy of The Neverhood, I was confused by the page you're reading now; it says "Neverhood 2000 by SouthPeak Interactive," and I knew that the original game was released in 1996 by DreamWorks. Was this a sequel that I should also be looking for? I did some research, and found out that in 2000 SouthPeak was going to release a newly polished version of the old game, using higher-resolution photography that wouldn't look so grainy. Unfortunately, they never released it. The reviewers here, including me, have all played the original game, The Neverhood.

Now that that's cleared up...The Neverhood is a unique point-and-click adventure game done entirely in claymation. You guide a placid clay person named Klaymen around a brightly-colored world with very few other creatures in it, solving puzzles and slowly unraveling the story of how this world was created, what happened afterward, and what Klaymen must do to save it. While you're in a puzzle room, you have a third-person view of Klaymen and the objects around him. While you're moving Klaymen between rooms across the clay landscape or having him operate a machine, you have a first-person view through his eyes.

All the while this crazy music is playing --- lots of weird twanging noises and mumbly nonsense lyrics, but really catchy songs. The soundtrack by Terry Taylor --- who apparently is a "Christian music" artist most of the time --- was actually released as a separate CD, and I intend to pick it up one of these days...

Most of the puzzles in this game are pretty strange, relying on abstract visual and other associations; I had to take notes on a few of them in order to keep everything straight. There are several places where you do something that only affects an area far away, so you have no idea what you've done until you happen to walk by and notice it. There's one seriously complicated puzzle that I solved by thinking about a long story that you get to read at one point in the game. When I was done I looked up some solutions online to see if they took the same approach --- they didn't, not at all, but hey, my solution worked...See what your results are!

Hardcore adventure gamers may dislike this game for being so illogical and quirky...but it's full of charm and highly original style, and almost anyone can play it. For me, it was definitely worth the high prices that used copies now go for.

Rating:
Summary: Clay + Funky, jazzy music + Clever puzzles = Excellent
Review: You know how some experiences --- be they movie, television or, God forbid, real life --- enter your vocabulary? Some phrase from Monty Python transformed into a code that tells just the right story for a moment. A snatch of music from the Empire Strikes Back that plays in your head each time your boss (teacher?) comes in. Camp as it is, the Neverhood is full of these spectacular moments. Humorous, catchy, absurdist, and beatifully rendered in clay. The puzzles are solid although rarely great, but the visuals, music, interface, and FEEL of the game are superb.

Two warnings: (1) Be patient in the opening scenes; the interface really is excellent although sparsely documented. (2) Not to spoil anything, but when you see the writing on the wall, you might check how long it is before you decide to read it.

Now, how am I going to get this music out of my head?

(Doo, doo, doo-doo, doo... doo, doo, doo-doo, doo, ditty-doo...)