Alekon

Ah yes, a strange & beautiful world filled with magical creatures. Sounds like the Pokémon Co. has FINALLY some competition. Sadly, this is the closest we’ll ever get to Pokemon Snap on PC. As a kid, I spent hours on Pokemon Snap and I was more than happy when I found Alekon on Steam a couple of months ago. I think it's really a hidden gem more people should know about considering how GOOD it is. If you like Pokemon Snap but want more freedom to roam around and take pictures without a care in the world, this is your game. Alekon it’s sort of a spiritual successor to Pokemon Snap. It’s a creature collector similar to Pokemon Snap but you solve the creatures problems and have mini-games with them. You photograph "fictions", which are basically animals that represent concepts and archetypes, each of which has a scientific name. Unlike in Snap, you need to photograph each fiction performing a variety of different behaviors. It’s again very similar to Pokémon Snap, similar enough that it if feels familiar but not like a ripoff, with a lot more story to it with fun mini games and quests mixed in as well. Once you solve 3 puzzles in any given stage, you get to freeroam it. There's lots of variety in interacting with the different characters, puzzle-solving, and a bit of neat story. It also has a LOT of secrets to find. The creatures are super cute and colourful, and it truly feels like the Pokemon Snap I always wanted. It is also not short, especially not if you do everything. There's no crafting, no resource-management, no town-building, and basically nothing that'd leave you with analysis paralysis. Some of the gameplay is almost identical to Pokémon Snap, even down to throwing focks donuts! The overworld quests are varied and interesting, with a mixture of reaction minigames, logical minigames, and dialogue minigames. It's hard to explain why the "simple but engaging" games are so enjoyable, but this definitely hits all the right spots. Small attention to detail bits like automatic photo management and unlimited camera reel gets rid of the annoying bits. For example, if you take a better photo of a creature, it automatically replaces the past photo. I'm an absolute sucker for these kind of games, where the core gameplay is very chill and straightforward but the occasional minigame adds complexity. So I absolutely loved everything about it except some of the minigames, which can be rather difficult if you don't have good reflexes. Like a too-fast rhythm game and a couple of timed ones. You can beat the main game without completing all of the minigames though, so unless you're an obsessive completionist, it's definitely worth playing. Alekon would have almost certainly become my niche special interest if New Pokemon Snap hadn't come out around the same time. It's so good and has loads of potential for a sequel. Until Nintendo gets some sense though (big if I know), this is the best alternative available on PC. If you’re even remotely interested give it a try, I assure you it won’t be a disappointment. 9/10

[b]Rating:[/b] ⭐⭐ ☆ ☆ ☆ / 5 I think this is a harsh thumbs down but I just don't think the game is good enough for me to recommend it. Let's start with the positives as it's fair to say this game still has a lot of good going for it, but has an awful lot of bad too. Alekon has a nice world created for it with a lot of information about the characters, all with their own personalities. You will discover a lot of that through the photography part of the game, taking photos of the animals doing different things showing off all of their whimsical quirks. It's fun to experiment with this, doing different things to try and provoke certain poses and finding everything there is to know about the creatures. On top of this, each area has secrets to uncover, revealing new creatures or sometimes making a new event or interaction happen unlocking new poses which can be very fun to find. On the negative side of things, there are a lot of mini-games to complete as side quests for the characters. These give you rewards and some abilities that will help on your travels to snap more photos of creatures. Most of the rewards end up being customisation which is okay but for the most part pretty uninteresting. The actual mini-games themselves though are just awful and entirely unfun. For starters, the rhythm mini-games are excruciatingly punishing, and insanely fast paced and challenging. You would not expect this from a game that is clearly targeted towards a younger audience due to its cutesy nature. They'd never be able to complete it, I managed to after a lot of frustration, I did not play this game to be challenged intensely, its a chill game about taking photos, why are there insane rage inducing challenges in this game? I was checking the forums too and it seems the devs were aware of this long before but decided to not act upon it. There was another mini-game which requires you to move your character (like a crane) and pick up purple mushrooms. However the mini-game just feels like pure RNG because its next to impossible to tell where you're picking up from. It just isn't a well designed mini-game at all and just leads to a frustrating mess. I spent about 20 minutes sat there retrying over and over again until I finally got lucky enough that I beat it. I'd noticed this was also highlighted in forums to the developers at some point but they didn't make any changes. Another mini-game is one where you have to swipe your tail at the other opponent 3 times to get a victory. The AI on it is absolutely ridiculous though, I literally have no idea how you're meant to beat it. Every single time I do it I get stuck into an infinite loop where I dodge their attack and they dodge my attack every time. What am I meant to do? Horribly designed yet again or maybe just horrifically ill-explained. I'm very surprised how bad the mini-games are considering the rest of the game itself is decently fun. It's nothing I'd tell people to go out of their way to play but its an otherwise fun little time to spend some of your time. Yet the mini-games are either just uninteresting and boring or just a complete unfair mess that its baffling how it made it through playtesting. I feel bad giving it a thumbs down as it isn't the worst thing I've ever played but the mini-games are unfortunately still half of the game and are severely reducing my ability to enjoy it. If they were more fun I wouldn't have any problems with the game and it would probably make the characters a lot more enjoyable too but it just sort of drags everything down to a frustrating mess for something that should be relaxing. I do not want to be getting annoyed at dumb mini-games because I am sat pressing retry for the thousandth time on it. A big shame

Sometimes you swear a game was made specifically for you and you just start crying. Alekon looked like Pokemon Snap, and it pretty much was. I thought the on rails levels were short, then my mind was blown when I got to live out my childhood dreams of being able to walk off track and take my perfect pictures. And there were secrets just off the track waiting for you. I love you guys so much for making this, thank you. I loved the additional little quests for all the creatures you took pictures of. It was fun being able to decorate the hub world and gain helpful abilities from them. I only wish it was longer.

[h3]I love-hate Alekon[/h3] I’ll explain this later. For start let’s with what Alekon is. It’s a game of pictures. You get around making pictures of cute creatures. So yes, it’s like Pokemon Snap (not gonna lie, I bought it couse it was cheaper than that game). The story in here is… well… it exist. No masterpiece but at least it’s in tune with the game. You need to spark creativity and meet Alekon at the end. Going around, snapping pictures is fun. Progression is done well too. You need to solve simple puzzles to unlock new paths. The game even gives you some animation as reward. The best part though is wandering. After you finish all 3 paths in area, you’re free to explore. This is where you can find all poses of Fictions (the creatures are called like that). But that’s not all. If you fulfill quests you’ll get new abilities, some stuff to customize pictures and even hub area. All so you can be creative. Quest are quite diverse in fact. Some are as simple as “pick right answer”, others require some investigating in the field and some require skill (which looks like I do not have.) That leads me to reason why I love-hate this game. I enjoyed it quite a lot but music mini games made me rage quit. That was something I did not expect in relaxing game. No idea how kid would beat this. All in all it’s a good game. Just make sure you won’t get into 100% it or you’re get insane

Alekon is a ripoff of an old Nintendo game called Pokemon Snap! Where you take photos of pokemon. This is very similar thematically, you wander around, take photos of pokemon, and play minigames with them to get them to different poses so you can collect all the photos you need. It's family friendly but certainly not wallet friendly for what you get for the whopping $16 USD price tag. One important note is that even though this is an amateur project, it does seem to be sincerely and genuinely made. I couldn't find any flipped assets, plagiarism or any other kind of insincere actions from the developer, but unfortunately genuine intentions alone are not enough to produce a brilliant PC gaming experience. Another upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers. The game features low-polygon "retro" assets with cartoony, mobile app style shader effects, making this look like a barely functional mobile app from 15 years ago. This visual style is a method that lazy devs often use when they have a lack of interest/capabilty to create highly detailed, high poly models and instead use shader effects to disguise that shortcoming under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the game. It's far below the state of the art visuals gamers expect as a result of their decisions. Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The game never really caught on with the millions of gamers on Steam, with a very low peak player count close to launch, and then just a handful of players launching this game every couple of days. This is undoubtedly caused by factors such as those raised in this review. It's always helpful with buying decisions to consider how popular and successful the product is, and unfortunately while this did accumulate a few participation trophy reviews, overall, people just aren't using it. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? Ultimately I can't recommend this first and foremost because it's just not fun... many of the game mechanics are annoying (throwing donuts etc) and it just doesn't "work" the same way that better Pokemon games on PC do (Palworld, for example). And the price... Alekon has the preposterous price of $16 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $16 asking price for this game could get you games like "Subnautica", "Mass Effect Trilogy Pack" or "Mirror's Edge". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.

Overall this was a solid game. It definitely feels a like playing Pokémon Snap, though this game does put additional focus on story, exploration, puzzle solving, and minigames.

Great game with a lot of content, beautiful music, and fun achievements. The story is heartwarming and there was clearly a lot of love put into this game. There is quite a bit of creatures, and thought was put into fleshing them out; from how they interact with each other, their sounds, what their vision looks like, what they eat, their latin names, and more. Overall a great underrated game!

Great game for scratching the Pokemon Snap itch, but with its own personality. Extremely cosy and lots of fun trying to check off the different poses for each creature in each level. After you've done the on-rails segments, you unlock the Wander mode for each stage too so you can go at your own pace. Highly recommend for anyone looking for low stakes cosy fun!

"Alekon" is a nice little game by a very small team that takes the formula of the N64-FPS-on-rails-shooter "Pokemon Snap" and sprinkles it with a lot of customisation, unlockables and minigames. You arrive at the realm of imagination and revert its apathetic state by reframing its denizens, capture them in diffent activities and doing quests for them. The world is quite whimsical and the creatures (while feeling a little bit bland sometimes) are charming, there is a free-roaming option of each area after you beat the on-rails sections (but the mild platforming in it can get a little agrravating, because of the stiff floaty controls). Also there is some puzzling, which fits in the pacing well. Once there is mentioning of real life brands and subculture which I found a little offputting, put other than that the narrative is quite befitting and upbeat. Quite a unique title for all ages [spoiler] except for maybe the "doing shrooms and spacing out part" [/spoiler] that can be completed in around 5 hours (and maybe 100% in around 10?). Give it a go if you like a carefree experience!

such a wonderful gem! after finishing new pokemon snap i was itching for more photography games, and this plays very similar to pokemon snap but with a bunch of added features, namely free roam and tons of minigames! the core formula has you moving along rails to snap pictures of various creatures, and you can throw food to alter their behaviours. i absolutely adore the free roam mode and it's everything i wanted in pokemon snap. you get to go off the track and completely explore the large open areas all on your own and find all sorts of little secrets! the addition of mini games, puzzles, and quests also make this game such a fulfilling and worthy experience :) !!