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.
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.
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. 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. Pikuniku is a game full of ideas that are introduced and then tossed aside for another new novelty. It's ace.
And it, too, is amazing, a joyous, smart and imaginative adventure
that's the rarest of things: a genuinely funny video game. There's the
strong influence of Keita Takahashi's work in its aesthetic, though
Pikuniku has a voice all of its own. 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.
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.
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. 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. Tying all that together is your own character, a gangly,
gamboling little thing that can roll up into a ball and blitz down
slopes. The running animation is everything, clumsy and playful and enough on its own to make me chuckle. There's the faintest of Metroidvania touches as you
collect different hats that, over time, allow you access to different
areas.
It's all gentle, almost slight stuff in what's an agreeably breezy
game - about three to four hours, all told. 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. 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 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. It's slight
but not exactly insubstantial, a perfect little sweetener to kick off
the year with. The only slight downside is that Pikuniku leaves you
wanting more - but how often can you say that of a video game?
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