In the Kafkaesque opening to Creaks, a young man finds a mysterious door leading from his tiny cluttered bedsit to a surreal subterranean kingdom threatened by a giant monster. He must now work his way through a succession of cryptic escape rooms, each inhabited by strange enemies with predictable patrol patterns. Robotic dogs run at you if you get too close, but always return to their beds; weird jellyfish creatures float left and right, but always head upwards if they encounter a barrier; dark, spiky-haired figures mimic your every move, unless blocked by furniture.
From the very beginning, we’re in familiar game-design territory. Once you figure out each creatures’ behaviours, they can be manipulated into pressing floor pads or hitting switches that bring down barriers or turn on lights that freeze any foe caught in the beam. There are buttons and levers for you, too, all of which modify the play-space to aid your escape. Mostly, you’re figuring out the correct sequence, trapping one enemy here in order to activate a sliding door over there, with an emphasis on planning and logistics rather than running or jumping.
For anyone who grew up playing classic puzzle platformers such as Impossible Mission, Lost Vikings, or the Oddworld series, this is instantly recognisable stuff, and the patterns of trial, error and logical deduction are pleasingly simple to fall back into. Disappointingly however, the structure of the levels and the rules underpinning them hardly strays from a restrictive blueprint. Certainly, the puzzles become increasingly challenging and new enemy types bring fresh perils, but the essential interactions – study patrol patterns, flip switches – never evolve. In this respect it is a very nostalgic, even conservative game.
But Creaks is also a beautiful and darkly imaginative visual spectacle. The underworld environment is a sort of decaying stately home, its labyrinthine architecture constructed from ruined libraries, overgrown gardens and cluttered workshops; on the walls are surreal puppet paintings that temporarily suck you into them to jump a fish through a series of hoops, or sneak up on two lovers in the park disguised as a tree, or control a puppet in a sword-fight. Alongside the enemy creatures, peaceful anthromophised birds desperately attempt to protect what’s left of their home from the claws of the behemoth that plagues them.
The intricate handicraft art style and weird menagerie of beasts will no doubt remind many players of Maurice Sendak, but Amanita Design also has a whole history of Czech animation and puppetry to call on – the legacy of masters such as Jiří Barta and Josef Kábrt is surely present in the game’s surreal folkloric characters and locations and in its uneasy melding of the whimsical and sinister. Though the puzzles begin to feel samey, the world itself continues to surprise and intrigue right through to the epic conclusion. Cleverly, there is no dialogue in the game – it conveys its story through sound and mime, allowing players to transplant their own meanings and interpretations and giving the world a rich, imaginative dimension.
It would have been wonderful to see this team’s giant imagination expressed through the subversion of, rather than adherence to, well-worn puzzle platform conventions, but perhaps that is just plain greedy. It is, after all, such a treat to find a gorgeous narrative game that owes nothing to the culturally prevalent aesthetics of Disney, Marvel or Studio Ghibli. While the puzzle construction at the heart of Creaks is formulaic, that should not be a disincentive to give this short, singular experience a try. No time with an Amanita Design game is ever wasted.
