One Eyed Kutkh comes with an interesting story attached to it. Originally released a year ago as freeware for the PC, it’s now having a second release on consoles like the Xbox One, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch. The only difference is that this time, you have to pay five dollars for it. It’s also stopped being free on Steam, though the cost there is only three dollars for some reason. As of this writing, it’s still possible to download it for free from Game Jolt (which I did in order to get a feel for any differences that exist between the PC and Xbox One version I received a key for), and you can also play through half of it for free on mobile devices before getting a non-English screen that no doubt says something along the lines of “give us money for the rest.” That’s a veritable Hokey Pokey of approaches for the same game, and a cynical person might suggest that the developers are cashing in on the consoles’ less crowded stores and captive audiences because those factors are turning something like the Switch into a gold rush, but arguably shady behavior has never really been my concern. However much a game costs and whoever is behind it, the only thing that matters is its quality. Sadly, One Eyed Kutkh isn’t very good.

This is a strange one for sure

What we’ll generously be calling One Eyed Kutkh’s story is steeped in vague mythology and told exclusively through body language and little drawings that occasionally show up above people. The general arc is that an alien-type thing crash lands on a planet, steals the (personified) sun and moon’s ships to get home, but it doesn’t work and he keeps them for some reason. Then you take over as a person who lives on the planet and who found a missing gear from the alien’s spaceship, and the goal is to investigate the missing sun and moon while looking for the gear’s owner. Then things work out and everyone is happy. Or maybe not. Honestly, there are limits to non-verbal communication that make nuance more or less impossible, so it’s difficult to speak to anyone’s mood at the end. After all, the moon starts the game slumped over and looking sad, so maybe it just has resting morose face.

When you really get down to it, One Eyed Kutkh is a game of watching characters slowly shuffle across the screen for 30 minutes. There’s not much here.

Clicking on arrows

It’s not possible to recommend the game based on its story, and the gameplay is arguably worse. Basically, your characters are periodically given between one and three options ranging from moving to reminding you what the goal is. Clicking the arrow to move causes the character to slowly shuffle to the next designated point that’ll provide you with similar options, which results in the entire game feeling like a short movie that occasionally pauses to ask you if you want to keep watching. This is every bit as aggravating as it is experimental. The console versions at least feel slightly more directly controllable; while the left analog stick controls what’s effectively a mouse cursor, you can move your character around with the pad (but only when the arrows show up, and only a quick tap to start the walking cutscene). Still, you still have no choice but to use the fake mouse cursor when dealing with “puzzles”—which pose no challenge, require little more than moving things on top of other things, and are easily broken. Everything seems designed for a touch screen.

Messing around with the cursor, I somehow managed to duplicate it.

Interesting style that lacks variation

The music and visuals are both good! The downside is that the game is short and takes place in one small area, so there’s no variation whatsoever. I mean, look at the screenshots below. Despite using screenshots from different points in the game, it’s almost impossible to tell where one thumbnail starts and the next begins. The same goes for the music, which is pleasant and atmospheric, but ultimately forgettable in the way that atmospheric tracks so often are. The sound effects, on the other hand, are a mess. There are some good ones, there are some bad ones, and there are moments where multiple effects play at once and cause a loud clipping effect. You can hear this at 14:20 in the first embedded video. Surely it would have made more sense to find a way to mute three of the four sound effects playing simultaneously?

*An Xbox One review key for One Eyed Kutkh was provided for the purpose of this review

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