My 100 Video Game Challenge (2024) #19: Pikuniku

Played on: Xbox One, PC

I'm at a loss as to how to even begin to start breaking down Pikuniku. The developers have billed this game as a, "Dystopian adventure about making people happy." I suppose that's not strictly inaccurate. The game does have a very colourful presentation, and a very mischievous tone, but how do I even adequately describe it? I'll do my best, I suppose.

Well, to start, Pikuniku is yet another game that I discovered while exploring Xbox Game Pass. It was leaving the service in a few days when I found it, and, since I thought the title art looked kind of charming, I decided to download it to my Xbox and try it out. I can't say I was fully prepared for what lay within, but I'll do my best to sum it up.

Pikuniku is a sort of adventure game, sort of platformer, sort of puzzle game, wherein you control a red blob-like creature of unknown origin called 'Piku'. Awakened from a deep slumber in your hillside cave, you stumble outside, only to be captured by nearly villagers (who are also colourful blob types), and declared a beast. This is around the point when you learn that the village is being showered in free money, in exchange for its supply of corn, by the very happy-go-lucky and not-at-all shady Sunshine Inc. Thus, with seemingly nothing better to do, you, as Piku, have to discover what's up with Sunshine Inc., and maybe, if you're lucky, find out who you are and where you come from. Not the cave, evidently.

Despite its Japanese-sounding title, and the fact that it's complemented by Japanese kana underneath it, Pikuniku is not a Japanese game, and is actually a European game, developed by a collective of French and British developers under the label, "Sectordub." The game is also published by beloved indie publisher, Devolver Digital, who, if you're not familiar with their work, seem to pride themselves on producing bizarre, highly experimental games. Thus, Pikuniku fits pretty neatly into their portfolio, even when it's much more outwardly 'cute' than most of Devolver's more mature-minded catalogue.

Most of Pikuniku is played by running, rolling and jumping across the game's handful of environments. You also manipulate objects to solve some simple physics puzzles and open paths ahead, while occasionally taking part in a boss fight (the only true moments of combat), or a minigame challenge. Pikuniku definitely isn't complicated in terms of how you play it, but its main single-player story mode is pretty good at keeping the player guessing nonetheless. To that end, the writing throughout Pikuniku's story mode was often remarkably funny and playfully nihilistic. Plus, I appreciated some of the ways that the game's otherwise straightforward play mechanics were implemented into a surprisingly flexible series of puzzles and environmental challenges.

I also want to give special mention to Pikuniku's soundtrack, which is just as offbeat as its vibrant visuals, but also just as consisently charming. Pikuniku sports one of those lovable, yet also appropriately silly music suites that's a lot of fun to hum along with as you play, and I feel like the game's soundtrack is low-key one of its most entertaining features.

As with several of the indie games I've played so far in 2024 however, Pikuniku does suffer from its rather short length. This game isn't hugely expensive, thankfully, but it is still a game that you can easily breeze through in around three hours at most, especially if you don't bother with hunting for achievements. On the note of achievements as well, Pikuniku has some real doozies, even considering how simplistic its fundamental gameplay is! I'm talking achievements that less than 2% of players have earned across both Xbox AND PC (there is also a Nintendo Switch version of Pikuniku, but I didn't play that one, and it doesn't offer achievements to earn anyway), giving this game some of the most surprisingly rare achievements in the indie game space!

Some of these achievements are hidden in Pikuniku's co-op mode, a separate play section wherein you and a buddy can take control of Piku and his apparent orange companion, Niku (who never actually appears in the main story mode), in order to solve a series of puzzles that require collaboration between players. Frankly though, many of these puzzles are so simple, that solo completionists can get through them by just fumbling around with two controllers. Don't bother enlisting online friends either; Pikuniku's co-op mode is local-only, with no online option on any platform. That's a little surprising, and furthers the feeling that this co-op mode is superfluous and rather tacked-on. Despite some cute little challenges in it, I didn't feel that it was a truly necessary addition to Pikuniku.

In any case, I was able to complete Pikuniku's Xbox One version before it left Xbox Game Pass, and imagine my surprise when I dug into my Steam library shortly afterward, and discovered that I'd actually received a free copy of Pikuniku's PC version some time ago! Curious, I grabbed my spare Xbox controller and played through the PC version of Pikuniku after this discovery, which is pretty much completely identical to its Xbox One cousin in every way, from performance to visuals to everything else. Despite this, I felt that my play experience with Pikuniku was a little more fun on PC, though this could simply be because there wasn't additional stress from trying to play through the game on a time limit, like I had to do on Xbox. Not only that, but I also had the option of taking Pikuniku's PC build on the go via my Steam Deck, where the game feels most at home, honestly. Its natural comfort on a portable device also no doubt explains why Pikuniku was originally announced as a Nintendo Switch console exclusive, before later expanding to Xbox One as an Xbox Game Pass addition.

I got a little more out of Pikuniku's storytelling than I did its gameplay, but I also felt that the game's ironically cute presentation amused me quite a bit too. Its cutesy-critters-meets-cynical-dystopia pitch isn't wholly unique, but the character quips and solid sense of humour throughout Pikuniku still help it carve out its own strange identity. As another quirky curiosity piece, a la Donut County or Lumbearjack, Pikuniku succeeds for the most part, even if Donut County so far edges it out for my favourite 'weird, yet weirdly good' indie game I've played in 2024 so far.

IF I HAD TO SCORE IT: 7/10