Pikuniku review - a brilliantly breezy, genuinely funny puzzle platformer
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.
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.
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