![]() It's definitely not suspicious that the CEO of Sunshine Inc. ![]() Upon leaving your hillside hovel, you discover a green and happy village where the pear-like creatures delight in how money rains down from the skies, thanks to the apparent kindness of a corporation called Sunshine Inc. It turns out, however, that you're a Mr Man-like red ball with eyes and legs, mostly expressionless, and definitely not terrifying. A creature feared by the locals, because you've been gone long enough for them to have mythologised you. ![]() Pikuniku, as well as being outlandishly fun to say out loud, is a platforming puzzle game in which you play The Beast. That's what the character in the ridiculously delightful Pikuniku most immediately reminds me of. It's slight but not exactly insubstantial, a perfect little sweetener to kick off the year with.Publisher: Devolver Digital Release: 24th Janĭo you remember those jelly-like toy octopuses you had when you were a kid, which you throw at a window or wall? They'd half-stick/half-walk their way down the surface, their legs glooping on and off as they rolled in a semi-controlled fall. There's more to return to once the credits have rolled - a bevvy of secrets to be found, or a standalone co-op mode which presents its own bespoke levels that lean more heavily on the physics of it all, while still maintaining that breezy style of the main campaign. There's a decent basketball mini-game, a rhythm action diversion and a handful of boss encounters complete with their own punchlines, and the pacing of it all is pretty much perfect. There's not much offered by way of resistance, the puzzles that present themselves as you go about helping various NPCs all solvable within seconds (apart from one egregious example very early on - let me just save you a fair bit of pain and suggest seeking out a spider), but still Pikuniku manages to pack a fair few surprises in its short running time. It's all gentle, almost slight stuff in what's an agreeably breezy game - about three to four hours, all told. There's the faintest of Metroidvania touches as you collect different hats that, over time, allow you access to different areas. The running animation is everything, clumsy and playful and enough on its own to make me chuckle. Tying all that together is your own character, a gangly, gamboling little thing that can roll up into a ball and blitz down slopes. Plant a boot in an NPC (an outstretched leg is your most effective method of interaction here) and they'll have a reaction or a single line retort, and elsewhere there are tinkling piano platforms, lampshades that ring like a bell when you hit them. Pikuniku's humour is mostly in what you do it's a puzzle platform that's blessed with the softest of physics, and it presents a world that's always got something for you to poke at. Its send-up of late capitalism is hardly Chomsky, but it does give Pikuniku's world a delightful edge it's a world of magic toasters and scheming acorns where you can sense the slight crack in the edge of the mile-wide smiles on the faces of forest folk, or spot the CCTV camera that pokes its head around the side of a grand old oak. There's warmth and wit in the characters that you come across - you play The Beast, a blob on two legs that emerges from a cave at the outset of Pikuniku and stumbles upon a cartoon world beholden to an awful conspiracy as it suffers at the hands of the corporation Sunshine Inc. ![]() There's the strong influence of Keita Takahashi's work in its aesthetic, though Pikuniku has a voice all of its own. It's ace.Īnd it, too, is amazing, a joyous, smart and imaginative adventure that's the rarest of things: a genuinely funny video game. Pikuniku is a game full of ideas that are introduced and then tossed aside for another new novelty. It is amazing, and if Pikuniku - a puzzle platformer for PC and Switch that's being published by Devolver - never goes quite as dark, it's definitely drinking from the same well. Which is part of the thrill - the weird, messy thrill - of Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared, the YouTube phenomenon that starts off BBC and then goes full Current 93, a nursery rhyme whose occult roots crack through all the sweetness. Availability: Out January 24th on PC and Switch.Not just your straight-up, in your face Chocky sinister either beneath the primary colours and blunt language of many a show there's the feeling that something's not quite right. Kid's TV shows, you've no doubt discussed with friends while waiting for someone to come back from the all-night garage with a packet of french fancies and a fresh packet of skins, can be kind of sinister. Playing out like an interactive episode of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, Pikuniku is a perfectly formed three hour adventure. ![]()
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