Akimi Village (PS3) Review
NinjaBee brings World of Keflings style play to the Playstation Network with Akimi Village. This cartoony village building game has you setting Akimis to work to build a whole city, but is it all work and no play or an all-around good time?
As the game begins, you are given the choice between playing as a male or female character, both of whom will wake up on a strange land with no idea how they got there. An elderly raccoon of somewhat questionable sanity informs you that you will be unable to to return home until you have dispelled the gloom that has mysteriously stricken the land. In order to do that, you must plant an acorn in a spirit well, which really just involves picking up the acorn the raccoon gives you and placing it in the hole. When this is done, a large area of gloom around the spirit well will dispel, turning black ground and gloomy Akimi into a lush green area that can then be mined and put to work.
And that’s what the basic idea of Akimi Village is: put the Akimi to work and start building things. There are stones, bamboo, forests, straw, and spirit that can be mined. Your character can do the mining, of course, but it’s way faster to set your Akimi to work for you. Simply pick up an Akimi and set it in front of the item you need mined and they’ll get right to work. If you want the item delivered, pick up the mining Akimi and take him to where you want the mined items to go to and you can just “set it and forget it.” Your Akimi will continue to mine and deliver unto eternity for you. One thing you have to be aware of is that you have a limited supply of Akimi, so you’ll need to budget them wisely to make sure you have enough for all the tasks you have to accomplish. As you lift the gloom from new areas of the map, all of the gloomy Akimi will perk up and become available for you use, but there is still a limited number for quite a lot of work.
The basic goal of the game is to build things, starting with simple structures that unlock ever more blueprints for larger and larger structures. You use the items you have mined to create the pieces of the buildings. A blue shining light guides you as to where to place the items, and when they are all in place a building will appear in their place. As you progress, you will create more buildings that can turn basic items into more complex things like bricks, paper, and sculptures, and you’ll also gain the ability to harvest spirit, which is needed to grow plants. As the buildings get more complex, some of them need educated Akimi to operate them. Educating Akimi consists of dropping them off in front of the school and picking them back up with a feather on their head to signify their newfound education. You can also take Akimi to special schools to make them perform faster. After a certain amount of time, the buildings you create will be eligible for upgrade. This was a bit of a letdown, though, as there wasn’t much to it. The Akimi associated with the building will tell you it is ready to upgrade. You push the triangle button and watch the building grow a bit bigger ad fancier, and that’s about it.
One very convenient feature of Akimi Village is the idea of central storage. You don’t need to take all your items to many different buildings and then move them back and forth to build things. Once you set your Akimi to delivering the items, you can go and build without moving the items back and forth, which is quite convenient.
Final Thoughts
Akimi Village is a bright and colorful game that is surprisingly fun. All of the building and organizing that needs to be done keeps you pretty busy, although it was a disappointment that there wasn’t more areas to explore. I found the game to be quite engaging, and my kids loved it as well. There isn’t any objectionable content at all, and the repetitive nature of the game should appeal to most children. It should be noted, though, that reading is required, so it isn’t for the under six set. I give Akimi Village a 7 out of 10, and recommend it to gamers looking for casual gaming fun and parents looking for a fun family friendly game.
User Score:
2 votes
2 votes
U.S. Senior Editor/Deputy EIC at BrutalGamer, mother of 5, gamer, reader, wife to @MacAnthony, and all-around bad-ass (no, not really)
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