Pikuniku was fine, but I felt like the cuteness of the graphics and music and animations and character design didn’t make up for the relative lack of substance. The platforming is kind of janky in a way that I feel like was on purpose, but it sort of annoyed me. The narrative didn’t make me want to actually participate in it, at least initially. I felt like the game was kind of just assuming you wanted to play it and was presenting you with things to do, instead of making you actually want do those things. Like, it’d be one thing if it was just a platformer, with a loose story to string together the levels, but it’s also an adventure game, and neither aspect held up. There are some individual activities that are pretty fun, though - there’s some fun minigames and collectables to find. If I had received Pikuniku as a kid I probably would have played the shit out of it. As an adult, I beat the game just to satisfy my completionist urges (the story is pretty short) but I don’t feel super compelled to go do the rest of the stuff the game has hidden around.

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