Herman Review

Herman has a lot going for it. The beginning (which parodies Braid) made me laugh. The graphics have a lot of style (alternating between cartoony and surreal), the music is good, and the story is amusing. The problem is that the game just isn’t very fun.

Herman wants to escape the drudgery of his life, but various office staff stand in his way. The gameplay is reminiscent of old arcade maze games like Lode Runner or Popeye. Each level has 4 floors connected with ladders and full of a whole lot of enemies. Using jump kicks, a shovel, and tangerines, Herman needs to get through each level to the door at the end. At the end of each level, you’re graded on your performance and gain points which can be used to upgrade your stats.

Herman isn’t a very capable hero. Herman is slow. Really slow. There’s an upgrade to speed him up, but it’s the most expensive upgrade in the store so you’re looking at several levels of skipping other upgrades to save up for it. Herman is also weak. There’s an upgrade to improve the power of his jump kicks, but that’s the second most expensive upgrade in the store and if you purchase it, you’re not purchasing the speed up upgrade. Even if you do power-up the jump kick, the hit detection isn’t the best up close so it’s not as useful as it could be. And as far as I can tell, there are no upgrades for the tangerines (which do little damage) or shovel (which is slow) so they’re going to stay meh the whole game.

Herman’s clunky controls and general weakness are all very frustrating, but what’s especially frustrating is that the game feels like it’s on the verge of being fun but never quite makes it. Despite its flaws, I felt compelled to keep playing the game even though I wasn’t having much fun. The real shame is that with a bit more work, we might have had a game worthy of the hype here. Tighten the controls, increase the speed, add some more variety in level designs, lower the cost of upgrades, and make some tweaks here and there, and you’d have a good game, but as it is now, I can’t recommend purchasing Herman, especially at a 400 point price tag.