While the art direction is appropriately cute, on a technical level it’s a flat aesthetic devoid of texturing and light, straight out of a basic image editor. Visually, Pikuniku is also a little primitive. This can stymie your progress to start with, but once past these sections, the rest is plain sailing. The surprising exception is a couple of puzzles at the beginning of the game – fixing the bridge you broke and scaring away birds blocking a cable car – which are made difficult by the presence of red herrings, intentional or otherwise. The platforming levels are rarely challenging and the brainteasers aren’t very teasing, more of a gentle tickle, with straightforward solutions. That said, Pikuniku’s accessibility is its main foible, at times. The writing never resorts to coarse language but remains hilarious throughout, fleshing out the world with daft, flawed characters that are hard not to love.
#PIKUNIKU LENGTH FULL#
Even Mr Sunshine is adorable, a plump pink cloud of a scoundrel, too bumbling and absurd to bear a grudge against despite his nefarious plans.Įven more delightful is the dialogue, full of whimsy and some genuine laugh-out-loud moments.
There are wiggly earthworms, colorful rotund townsfolk and an omniscient, interdimensional ghost. Piku meets a lovely roster of characters on his adventure, all looking straight out of a kid’s cartoon. Those legs may get Piku into trouble sometimes but they also let him bounce high into the air, take down enemies and win dance battles. Kick forwards and they’ll do so with a resoluteness that shouldn’t have been possible to portray with just a few red pixels. Balance on a ball and they’ll tussle with it in desperation to stay upright. Jump and they flail wildly, like a tube man that’s taken flight. It’s hard to put across how delightful those gangly little limbs are. Pikuniku isn’t afraid to be whimsical for the sake of it. Some side quests and encounters do nothing to further your progress but reward you with a funny scenario and a cute trophy or hat. Keep an eye out for special patches of ground, for example, and you’ll zoom in on snails and insects dancing about or even performing a display of acrobatics. Sometimes, you’ll do stuff purely for fun. Better still, it constantly surprises with sudden mechanical and even visual changes in minigames that riff on retro classics, rhythm games or something entirely off-the-wall, like designing a scarecrow’s face for a floundering artist. Pikuniku rarely stays the same, liberally transitioning from a classic platformer one minute to a puzzler the next, to a chase sequence and then a boss fight. Piku soon becomes the reluctant hero nobody asked for but everyone needs, in a wacky, hysterical adventure. He claims it’s all for the greater good and placates the populace with his mostly meaningless wealth, but something about his secret volcanic lair and shady top hat reeks of villainy. The entrepreneurial Mr Sunshine is sending his giant robots across the land, harvesting its natural resources.
Mostly.īut as the “beastly” Piku, no more than a red blob suspended on two dangly legs, I soon have bigger things to worry about. I’ve broken the village bridge, an anthropomorphic rock’s tea set and a momma bird’s eggs, letting her young escape off into the world. They capture me and string me up in a cage. The locals are terrified of me, saying I’m a ghastly beast of legend. I’ve only just awoken from my cavernous slumber and my day is already not off to a good start.
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