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Take a break and relax with AKA!

2K View2022-12-16

AKA (Reviewed)

Developer: Cosmo Gatto

Publisher: NEOWIZ

Released: Dec 14th, 2022

Price: $10 USD

AKA is a very cozy and casual farming simulator. It follows Aka, a red panda after returning from the great war, tired and wayward from continuing this life, they return home after losing many close friends. Aka decides to take up residence on their dead friend's farm, trying to start over with a peaceful life.

A few concerns

The UI management is bad

Normally in these types of games, the inventory is all together as one. If you needed an item equipped you would just open up your inventory or use hotkeys. However, in this game you have 3 different things to take note of.

The left side of the screen will cover crafting, and building. But navigating it is such a chore, and you can not craft more than one item at a time. This doesn't seem like much of an issue, until you realize you have to go back into the menu each time to craft multiples, which could be tedious if you need a lot of them.

The bottom of the screen shows what tools you currently have equipped, these are in their own inventory and you don't have to worry about making room.

The right side of the screen is where it gets wonky. You navigate on controller with the analog, but interact with the items with the D-Pad, but you can also use the D-Pad to navigate items in the left inventory, it gets confusing after a while.

A lot of Keyboard / Controller elements were overlooked

Both have their equal share of being annoying in their own ways. This is mostly due to the really weird key binds they have for default, which could have been remedied by working on a better overall inventory system.

By default the keyboard uses Tab, R and Q or E to navigate crafting, inventory and tools. Tab is fine and normally is how most of these games do it, E and Q and R do not make much sense. It's normally mouse wheel and 1-9 that are used to equip your multiple tools and weapons, these elements do not exist.

Previously mentioned the controller feels very clunky and not fully designed to meet the functions of the game, especially when trying to plant and water crop.

You can change these key bindings around to fit your preference, but it's still janky and needs to be adjusted by the developers to function more smoothly.

What the game is about

It's whatever you want it to be

It's more or less a game about doing chores and completing quests. Relaxing and playing mini-games. It's very casual and enjoyable to a degree, but there is no challenge. If you want to feel cozy and relax, this is a game that you can try.

Mini-Games

A lot of the mini-games are there for fun, there is no real reason to do most of them outside of to have fun and to take a break from doing the listed quests.

You could play some card games, play the piano, go fishing and plenty more.

Would you recommend this game?

Only if you enjoy cute casual games

It feels more like a game meant for a young child more so than an adult. Where they can just have fun and enjoy what the game has to offer while getting some very beautifully drawn scenes. So long as they make good on their attempts to fix the UI and janky controls, I would recommend it if you don't mind this genre.

Don't get me wrong, it was a cute and fun experience and is by no means a bad game. A few flaws here and there but with a little more polish it could be better.

This concludes my review of this game, while my opinions may be met with criticism, that's what makes gamers unique, you don't have to like the same things that others do, nor do you have to agree with them.

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- Pawkt

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