Kaipuu

4 Nostalgic
Kaipuu’s a platformer adventure game, created by Tuukka Virtanen (Virtanen Games) using Game Maker, the same creator of Painajainen and Seven Minutes, and was released in August of ’07.

The story of the game starts off with you wallowing over the loss of a loved one when suddenly you’re confronted by death, the physical form… In shape of a giant skull with horns. He grants you the opportunity to get your loved one back but there’s a catch, you must collect for him 400 souls scattered across the land.

Straight off the bat, the game has you in nostalgia, reminiscing on the times of Seiklus and Knytt, which were obviously both heavy inspirations for this game. The graphics, specifically the character, look like they were pulled out of Seiklus and brought back to life, while the gameplay and scale resemble Knytt.

Throughout the world there are a number of “portals” (the name i’m giving them) which change your color, but also your mood. White is love while black is hate. Now, scattered around the world, apart from the souls, are also special power-ups. These large, colored souls grant you different abilities but each ability can only be used while in a certain state, a good example would be love having an ability that grants you swimming capabilities, while hate has an ability that lets you walk through certain pressure barriers you couldn’t otherwise do while swimming.

The controls of the game are fairly standard, you press the arrow keys to move and [Enter] to access the map, and every so often a special ability requires a key press. My only real concern with the game did regard these controls, there’s nothing wrong with them except for the fact that when your character changes screens, he loses all momentum gained and you have to re-press the directional key. This does become quite the hassle, especially when you’re trying to advance through the higher altitudes and subsequently falling back to earth and having to walk all the way back around. The screen transition takes a couple of seconds and it certainly doesn’t help when you’ve been trying to jump the same, minuscule section for 5 minutes.

Upon pressing enter you’re displayed your menu screen. It displays the map in a square grid, but only shows the places you have visited, and also displays the different emotions (abilities) you’re trying to gain back, and which ones you have, or haven’t, collected already.

There is no real combat in the game, when i say that i mean there are no lives, health meters, respawns or an enemy who fights you back. Although, you will be tackling down a couple of the animals in the game, but i don’t want to ruin the fun of finding out what.

Music and sound effects in the game were excellent. upon approaching a different part of the world, the music fades in and out appropriately, and each song played is a direct reflection of where you are. Caves have that very mysterious, almost boss themed music to them, while underwater has you listening to a very calm, peaceful piano melody

Game saves are possible, but only where you started, which is a gigantic tombstone. While you do want to save as often as possible to prevent loss of any new souls you’ve found, be warned that it does take quite a large amount of time to save the game, usually longer than half a minute.

Kaipuu is definately one of the best games i’ve played all year. It re- kindles that flame of excitement and joy you first feel when you picked up Seiklus or Knytt and brought both of them back to life. The only thing that stopped me giving this game a five was that control issue mentioned earlier. If you’re a fan of adventure platformers, this is a required download, and if you’ve ever lost someone close to you, the game will connect on a whole other level and also holds some meaningful messages.