The NOKs

It's Delightful, It's De-Lovely, It's... Pretty Damn Strange

The Noks is about the weirdest game I've seen this year. I'm tempted to call it "indescribable," except we need to describe it, eh?

Partly, it's a game of collectibles. There are several hundred "Noks" in the world at present, and the developers plan to add more over time. You can think of Noks as something like, say, Magic: The Gathering cards, except that they aren't cards. They're animated 3D avatars with backstories. Some of them sing songs or perform music. And most have something to tell you about the game itself, or the backstory of the Noks universe. To understand that universe, you'll need to collect--well maybe not "them all," but lots of them.

Partly, it's s somwhat goofy first-person shooter, a subsection of the game called "The NOKlear War." You select one to five Noks to risk, and trigger a battle. You control a little armed pod that apparently moves around a battlefield like a hovercraft. Your Noks appear on the battlefield in little blue pods--and your opponent is trying to find those pods, shoot them, and grab your Noks. Meanwhile, his Noks appear in little red pods, and you're trying to do the same to them. There are powerups--shields, weapons, and so on, as you'd expect in an FPS--and the game is over either on a time-out, or when one player has collected all Noks of the other.

At least initially, you're playing against AI--there's a series of single-player levels. My impression is that ultimately it becomes a two-player game, although I'm not positive of that yet. The point, however, is that you are indeed risking your Noks--what your opponent collects, he keeps, and vice versa.

In addition, you get one free Nok per day, just by starting up the game and connecting to the remote server. Or you can buy ten-packs of Noks for $6 in-game. And there's a trading system so you can trade with other players.

Or you can think of it as a sort of MMO--you don't encounter the many other players face-to-face as you do in a traditional MMO, but you're playing in a universe consisting of all players, and can trade and message with them. (And, I believe, ultimately battle them.)

It's all--very smoothly done, with excellent, somewhat cartoony graphics; amusing, sometimes even hilarious dialog from the NOKs themselves, a straightforward and intuitive interface (although I'd like to see tooltips for the controls--each is a graphic, so it takes a little while to learn them).

I have no idea whether this is the next big thing--this odd combination of TCG, MMO, FPS, and animated avatars--and I suspect not, as it is so goofy. But innovative? Hell yes.

If you're looking for something other than the same-old same-old, the dreary repetitive minor modifications of last year's game that passes for improvement in this irritating industry of ours, well... Do click on the demo download button, there's a good fellow.

The Developer Says

NOKs Technologies combines the craze of card collection with the rich and active world of video games, using its state-of-the-art gaming platform. With two games already published in Israel, NOKs has developed a unique Virtual Collecting Console, allowing owning, trading and playing with 3D characters. Now, NOKs is set to bring this vision to the world.

Collect hundreds of these 3D, intelligent NOK characters in an addictive action-packed hovercraft shooter. With 21 levels, 3 differenet arenas, a online trading market and packs of free, very talkative NOKs, gamers can at last play in a way they have never played before: Play For Keeps.