Pikuniku - Charm Personified

The recommendation for Pikuniku came from a video by animator "Noodle". It featured in 7 lil' indie games i think you should play (no pressure) which only endeared me further to this puzzle-platformer. I'd gone in with similar expectations to that of A Short Hike, but admittedly felt a little burned out after Mutropolis. It wasn't a bad game, it just wasn't the game for me.

The first thing I was greeted with upon starting the solo campaign was a pink man shaped as a cloud jump scaring me, telling me he'd give me free money and that I was perfect. This type of random yet endearing humour is the brand of Pikuniku. Following on from this first cutscene, we have an endearingly cute protagonist by the name of Piku (you meet Niku in the co-op mode). You wake up, are greeted by a ghost friend, and then descend to the town where they immediately lock you up for being the fabled monster of the mountain. Once you've proved you're not a vicious man-eating jellybean, the game truly begins.

While the game takes around an hour and a half to complete, it still has many elements of open world games to make exploration a fun and necessary game mechanic, earning you coins you don't need (the only thing you need to buy is a pair of sunglasses for one coin) or, more rewardingly, a little snapshot of an 8-bit insect doing something cool.

For a game about revolting against capitalism, it sticks by it's morals when it comes to how the currency works in-game. That didn't stop me from trying to collect as many as possible anyway just because of the little achievement hunter living in my head. Instead of focusing on an economy, it focuses on just having fun, which is the right way to play this game. You're just a jellybean walking around, making friends and dismantling capitalism. Those are the goals of the game.

Coupled with the frankly adorable aesthetic is a soundtrack that is still in my head as I write this. Adaptive music done in this way is always brilliantly entertaining to me, especially when the main theme by brilliant composer

bo en is the catchiest thing I've ever heard in 21 years. The combination of this joyfully bouncy and catchy tune with the popping colours of the background make it feel like you're walking through a children's pop up book in the best of ways.

However, just behind this lovely and cheerful façade, there is a dark side. Well, technically a pink side. The advert at the beginning of the game comes from the primary antagonist, Mr. Sunshine. Who knew that someone giving you money and telling you you're perfect could be evil? He takes the resources of 3 villages and in response gives them money they don't really need, but still get excited about anyway. The penny dropped for me as a player rather quickly, but what adds to the hilarity is the blissful ignorance of the inhabitants of these villages, how do they not realise that the system they love is causing them so much damage in the long run and that the people behind the flow of money aren't always good at heart?

This is when the penny dropped a second time for me. A clever way to weave in a grander narrative than just "jellybean and friends kick pink cloud into space" but for it to have some real head scratching moments like this was golden. The Sectordub team outdid themselves in the writing department, lead by Rémi Forcadell in particular.

This leads me onto my favourite part of the game, how absolutely hilarious it is. I had a little man in a tree advise me out of nowhere how to wash dishes if I had cheesy pasta, I became a music artist by adding a single honk to an intense dubstep track, and the game's climax comes because the evil henchmen question how much they're getting paid to listen to the Mr. Sunshine.

This type of humour brings me back to the point I made at the start of this Forgotten Gems review; the humour is the core of Pikuniku because it is so tied to the story and gameplay elements. On top of being an astounding platformer with a (too short) campaign storyline that can be a critique on modern society, I've never had so much fun playing a game. I've never laughed so hard, giggled so often, or had a smile on my face so long with any other game than this one. If that isn't a good enough reason to get this game, I don't know what is.

Pikuniku is available for £10.29 through Steam, Nintendo, GOG and itch.