By Munchy and Kurt Kalata

The Neverhood is an awesome, but ill-fated "series". I'm not entirely sure if it should be called a series, because each of its games are incredibly different and have only loose ties to their predecessors. There's The Neverhood, the first and best, which is a Monkey Island-esque point-and-click game which originated on the PC. Skullmonkeys was the second, made exclusively for the home consolses, which can be vaguely described as Super Mario Bros. on LSD. And finally, there's Klaymen Gun Hockey, which was a kind of unofficial side game only released in Japan. These games (excluding Gun Hockey) were made by, ironically, The Neverhood (the name of the development team) and published by Dreamworks. A lot of the team members formerly worked on the Earthworm Jim games, such as Douglas TenNapel, the insane and wonderful man who created Earthworm Jim. A lot of that insane humor also shines through in the Neverhood titles.

The Neverhood

The Neverhood/Klaymen Klaymen: The Riddle of the Neverhood (1996) - Windows 95/PSOne

American Flyer

Klaymen Klaymen (PSOne)

Klaymen Klaymen (PSOne)

The Neverhood is an incredibly amusing adventure game that has a unique twist. This is one of the only games, if not the only game done entirely in claymation, which is what makes it so strange. The team working on this game put an astounding amount of attention to the animation of all the characters and objects within the game, giving it a very bizarre and cartoony look. It's clear that a lot of time and effort went into this. Unlike most other point-and-clickers, there's not much plot or dialogue at all. Klaymen, our hero, is all alone for the most part. He never speaks, except for one sole part near the end. There are only a few other creatures in his world, quite a few of which want to hurt him, and he has to figure out what happened that made the Neverhood so barren. This is revealed to you through little disks left by Klaymen's cousin, Willie Trombone. When you collect all of them, you are presented with a nifty little animated sequence which explains what happened to The Neverhood and its king, the strange creature named Hoborg. It all involves an evil villain named Klogg who's naturally up to no good. It's not a terribly complex plot, but the execution is done very well, and the voice acting is superb. In the way it plays, The Neverhood is pretty similar to other games of its ilk. You must navigate Klaymen through his world by clicking on buttons, levers, switches, keys, and any other interactive shit sprawled on the screen. To proceed at many points in the game, there will be many puzzles you must solve. Many of them are simple logical puzzles, similar to The 7th Guest or Myst. Sadly, it is in most of these puzzles that lies The Neverhood's one nagging flaw. A lot of the puzzles require that you go to some obscure corner of the overworld to find their solutions. This is why the game's manual suggests that you have a pen and paper at the ready wherever you go; there are many occasions when you'll see some strange hieroglyphs, wonder what they are, and leave the area, only to discover much later in the game that you should've written them down when you first saw them. Once you know the general layout of the game (or just use an FAQ), this isn't too much of a problem, and thankfully, it is also virtually impossible to die. As the manual says, there is only one place where you can die, and it is very clearly marked. The Neverhood has some of the greatest music known to man. It's easy to rank the game's soundtrack among some of the elite such as Symphony of the Night. What makes this particular soundtrack so awesome is how unique it is. The composer, Terry S. Taylor, wanted to do something a little different than most game soundtracks at the time. So, what we get is an awesome Dixieland-style jazz that is not only incredibly catchy, but at the same time fitting with the game's look and feel. If you're an adventure game freak, chances are you may have heard of and played this game. If you haven't, though, you must, using whatever means necessary. It is a little on the pricy side, but it's well worth it. Oddly enough, The Neverhood found a fair bit of popularity in Japan. Over there, it was was released on the Playstation under the moniker "Klaymen Klaymen". Aside from the language, there are a few notable differences between it and the original PC version. The resolution needed to be downgraded, but it still looks pretty good, and most of the animation is intact. It being on the Playstation, there are a LOT of loading times where there weren't any before, such as between screens, and even when Klaymen does his animations when he's holding still. This is annoying, but what makes it even more so is that the music starts over every time it happens. There is also a bit of a tutorial when you start the game. It mainly consists of little signs saying something like, "Push the circle button here!" so it's not all that special. The voices are also in Japanese, but sadly, they're very monotone and completely lack the soul that the American voices had. Probably the sole positive addition is the sound test in the options menu, which is really the only thing this version has going for it. There are also some omissions from the PC version. The ridiculous two-minute-long belch has been cut out, which is strange, considering that belching after a meal is a complimentary gesture in the East. Also omitted, thankfully, is the incredibly lengthy hallway in the house with the "H" on the door. The hall originally had a lot of stories about former kings of the Neverhood written on its walls, but it's highly unlikely many players actually took the time to read all of it, which is probably why it was taken out. It's just as well; the only real reason for traversing the hall is for the Klay disk at the end. The worst of the omissions is the lack of the "fast forward" code or the ability to skip the little walking sequences. In the PC version, if you typed "fastforward", the action would speed up, and you could also skip the walking segments by pressing the Space bar. These things made backtracking a lot less tedious, but as far as I can tell, neither feature is in the Japanese version. It's not horribly detrimental to the gameplay, but it would have been nice to have, especially due to the extra loading times. Obviously, if you haven't played this version of the game, you aren't really missing out on much. Hell, if you can go on the internet and read this article, you can probably play the superior PC version, unless you know something about your PC that I don't. Media Movie - Near the end (Japanese) Music - Klaymen's Theme

The Neverhood The Neverhood Klaymen Klaymen (PSOne) Klaymen Klaymen (PSOne) Klaymen Klaymen (PSOne)

Skullmonkeys/Klaymen Klaymen 2: The Skullmonkey's Counterattack (1998) - PSOne

European Cover

Skullmonkeys

Skullmonkeys

While The Neverhood found some success in the world of personal computers, the designers felt they needed to tap a bigger audience. While most gamers and critics loved the hilarious animation, the puzzles were a bit off-putting to many players. In order to expose the world of Klaymen and friends to a bigger audience, their next game become a platformer for the Playstation. And thus was born Skullmonkeys, published this time by Electronic Arts. The evil Klogg was banished from The Neverhood at the end of the first game, but has now ended up on a planet ruled by scary-but-stupid creatures known as Skullmonkeys. Klogg becomes their leader and sets off to rule the planet, while Klaymen is brought into the scene to stop him. Like the original game, the story is told through more gorgeous claymation sequences. While there aren't nearly as many, what's there is particularly precious, especially the "beans" video after the first stage. The gameplay is almost exactly like Donkey Kong Country - move forward, jump over pits, jump on top of bad guys, and collect icons to get 1-ups. There's a small assortment of weapons - including the ability to create a duplicate Klaymen by farting and destroy all of the enemies on the screen with the "Universe Enema". There are also tons of secrets in each level, whether they be power-ups or hidden bonus rooms. The controls are a little bit on the loose side, and the scrolling can sometimes feel a little bit haphazard. Even worse, there are lots of foreground elements that can block out enemies or platforms. Considering that Klaymen will explode after being touched once, these can lead to tons of cheap deaths. There are plenty of respawn points and plenty of opportunities to get extra lives, but it can get quite frustrating. There are tons and tons of levels, although most of them are quite short. Unfortunately, the developers decided to implement a password system rather than a save game feature, but at least it lets you cheat to see the later areas if you're bored with the gameplay. Thankfully, the game's sense of humor is still intact. One of the secret levels is simply entitled "The 1970s", and is filled with shag carpet, lava lamps, funky music, and trippy visual effects. One of the later bosses is the gigantic head of one of the game designers. And Terry S. Taylor is once again back to provide the soundtrack, this time focusing on catchy drum beats mixed with some snazzy bass guitar riffs. But the real standout is the Bonus Room song, a goofy lullaby that's both hilarious and creepy at the same time. The main problem with Skullmonkeys is that it's primarily focused on the classy visuals, so the gameplay never arises above the realm of "merely competent". It's still an incredibly creative title worth playing though. Media Video - Beans the Musical Fruit Music - She Reminded Me With Science Music - The Lil Bonus Room

Skullmonkeys Skullmonkeys Skullmonkeys

Klaymen Gun Hockey (1999) - PSOne

Japanese Cover

Klaymen Gun Hockey

Klaymen Gun Hockey

It's pretty strange for an American-designed game to get a spinoff specifically for the Japanese market. And yet here we are with Klaymen Gun Hockey, developed by a company called KIDSMIND and published by Riverhill Soft, who also published the other Klaymen games in Japan. It's pretty much just air hockey, except you shoot the puck with guns. On the playing field, there are several power-ups that can block your goals, unleash multiple pucks, or speed up the movement. The player with the highest score when the time limit runs out. And that's pretty much it. It's incredibly simplistic, especially since the gun aims towards the puck anyway. The whole game reeks of a cash-in. There's absolutely no claymation sequences, just some hand-drawn stills that tell the "story" of Klaymen's quest to play everyone in the Neverhood in Gun Hockey. There are only a handful of characters, including Klaymen, Willie, Klogg, Hoborg and Weasal (the big plant thing from the first game.) The music is depressingly bland too. It's interesting to see the Klaymen characters rendered in 3D at least. Gun Hockey feels like it would be a great mini-game in another title, but as a standalone release (even a budget one - the retail price was set a 3800 yen or about $35), there's little of interest in Gun Hockey outside of it being a mere curiosity.

Klaymen Gun Hockey

After Skullmonkeys, The Neverhood only went on to make one more game - Boombots for the PSOne. Although Klaymen had a cameo as a hidden character, it was pretty far removed from everything they'd done before, and it pretty much flopped. The various members of the Neverhood are still around - Doug TenNapel has been working in cartoons, and Terry S. Taylor still composes music. Here's hoping another another company will step outside the usual boundaries of computer animation and bring us something as uniquely defined as The Neverhood Chronicles. Links Doo's Neverhood Page An excellent fan site with tons of media. Mr. Bill's Adventureland - Neverhood An excellent review of the first game. Wikipedia - Klaymen A good overview of the games. Daniel Amos.com You can order the Neverhood soundtrack here.

The Neverhood