Game

Pikuniku

2019 · Google Stadia · Linux · Android · PC (Microsoft Windows) · iOS · Mac · Platform · Puzzle · Adventure

72IGDB player score
151 ratings

Previously Take

That 72 average hides a game its 151 fans would defend to the death. Adventure in the classic sense: comedy, forward momentum, and places worth seeing. The story is the main course; the multiplayer is the reason it's still installed years later.

About this game

Pikuniku is a puzzle and adventure game set in a colorful world. The player controls Piku, a small red creature, guiding him through levels and solving puzzles that mostly involve kicking and pushing objects onto switches to open the way forward. Piku can lasso his legs to swing from hooks and zip lines, curl into a ball to roll, ride minecarts, and travel through pipes to reach new areas. Along the way the player meets villagers to talk with and can spend coins earned in levels on items such as hats. A local co-op mode lets a second player control a similar orange creature named Niku across a set of cooperative levels.

In a colorful island world, a cheerful figure named Mr. Sunshine appears in a commercial offering the local creatures free money in exchange for the junk his giant robots collect. Around the same time, a small red creature named Piku is woken by a ghost in a cave and told to leave. Emerging into the world, Piku finds that a legend has painted him as an evil beast, and the frightened villagers cage him until he agrees to repair the bridge he accidentally broke. As Piku earns the villagers' trust and explores further, he discovers that Mr. Sunshine's machines are quietly stripping the island of its essential resources, and he is drawn toward a small band of rebels determined to stop them.