Doctor Kvorak’s Obliteration Game Review (Non VR)

Seven years in the making, Doctor Kvorak’s Obliteration Game features wacky characters in a deadly game show of life and death. Players decide if they should obliterate or save an entire planet. Described as a 3D, single player, puzzle, adventure game with 15 levels of story supported content the game promises a lot. Unfortunately, it does not deliver as it is inconsistent and riddled with poorly developed mechanics. For seven years worth of development, the game does not reflect the time invested.

Created by Freekstorm, a family run studio, Doctor Kvorak’s Obliteration Game sees the return of the silent character from their short animated film, Doctor Kvorak Destroyer of Worlds. This bright green alien, dressed in an equally bright red jumpsuit is the focus of the film, with a penchant for miniaturising planets he deems appealing and destroying those that he does not. Sometime after the release of this short film, Freekstorm decided to try its hand at the videogame market. The result being Doctor Kvorak’s Obliteration Game.

The game boasts an impressive amount of dialogue, it is too bad that most of it is listening to Doctor Kvorak’s inane babbling. Add the incoherent accent that is near impossible to understand without subtitles and you will find yourself dialing the volume down just to silence the irritating doctor. Occasionally there will be moments of dialogue between Kvorak and a chicken dressed in an astronaut's suit who, of course, rhymes every word. These conversations are meant to push the narrative forward, but rather than talk to each other the characters talk at each other. This means most of the dialogue dissolves into pointless chatter with no real purpose. From what I was able to garnish after several hours of play, Doctor Kvorak (who is also a God and a game show host?) designed the Obliteration Game to either destroy or save a planet through the actions of the player. The twist being that every planet that is saved actually gets miniaturised and stored in Kvorak’s ever growing museum of planets.

Every puzzle game has its main feature, Portal has its Portal Gun and sharp tongued Glados, Doctor Kvorak’s Obliteration Game relies on Kvorak being a hilarious distraction while you puzzle away. This ultimately fails as jokes fall flat behind the marble gargling alien. Movement and positioning are not helped by the odd control choice which makes the platforming elements all the more difficult, especially when our little blue alien avatar is unable to jump half his own height. Adding more frustration to the list, if your character falls from a height just a bit taller than himself he will crumple onto the floor, stunned and unable to move. The complete lack of mobility means that most of the level will be spent waddling around rather than actually solving puzzles. 

The puzzles themselves are relatively simple offering little in the way of a challenge. Occasionally I would be zapped by an electric patrolling drone or I would accidentally fall off a ledge while trying to solve them. It wasn’t until about five levels in that I began to have to approach a puzzle with some forethought. Without any unique mechanics, I found myself mindlessly completing levels and collecting items that didn’t feel worth collecting. In total there are three different types of pickups: planet pieces, the items needed to save a planet from destruction, level themed items, always 50 to collect, and wardrobe pieces that you can equip. Often, something worth collecting in a puzzle game will be hiding behind some dastardly trap but, Doctor Kvorak’s Obliteration Game is inconsistent with these items. Sometimes a planet piece will be behind a puzzle, other times it is simply sat in the open to collect consequence free. Due to this, I lost any motivation to complete a puzzle to obtain one of these collectables.

The character design resembles hand moulded clay figures that differ greatly from the pristine glossy environments they stand in. Their animations, robotic and glitchy, make them appear more terrifying than cute. The inconsistencies continue as some characters appear much more developed and higher detailed than others, making you wonder how far apart in the seven year development they were made from each other. Suffering several crashes and extremely long loading times (seven minutes just to get to the main menu), I was relieved to find the game itself was actually quite stable, occasionally stuttering when loading into new areas but otherwise a smooth game to play. Tying everything together is a retro-techno soundtrack that, despite being relatively repetitive, it is probably the best feature in the game.

Freekstorm appears to have focused their entire attention on their antagonist, relying on Kvorak to keep the players attention which ultimately fails. Clunky controls and poorly developed puzzles leaves this reviewer with only one choice...Obliterate Doctor Kvorak’s Obliteration Game.