The first is exploring a town and engaging in various minigames and fetch-quests to make the locals happy. Pikuniku mostly consists of two kinds of gameplay. Before too long you join a local resistance and start to fight back against Sunshine Inc. is stealing natural resources and showering the towns with money, so very few people are complaining at the moment. As you continue to explore the world you discover that the suspiciously friendly Sunshine Inc. The lumpy residents of the nearby town apparently think you’re some kind of terrible beast of legend, but you’re generally chill and help them with a number of their problems, so they decide that you are pretty cool. A lonely ghost gives you some tutorial exposition, after which you make your way out of the cave and into the greater world. You are a small red blob with expressive eyes and two extremely stretchy and articulate legs other than that, you are featureless. To reiterate, Pikuniku is at its core an adventure-platformer, with many similarities to the so-called “Metroidvania” genre, although I would hesitate to call Pikuniku a pure Metroidvania-style game. I’ve been tinkering with the game for the last week and I’m still coming to grips with what Sectordub is trying to accomplish here, and whether or not they were successful. With Pikuniku, Devolver finally has the closest thing to a mascot platformer, and therefore a mascot, that the company has possessed in its nearly 10-year history. “Weird” would be an inadequate word for the game, which strangely enough lampoons and affectionately calls back to the 8 and 16-bit platformers that defined the 90s. Such is the case with Pikuniku, a bizarre platformer-adventure developed by 4-man studio Sectordub. Devolver simply supports and publishes good games, indie, obscure or otherwise, and they have enough self-awareness that they maintain a good sense of humor about it (see their hilarious E3 press conferences). They’re substantial enough to publish arty indie titles like The Red Strings Club and Heavy Bullets, but they’ve also backed established studios like Croteam, and they’re responsible for the marketing and success of the Hotline Miami series. Over the years I’ve developed a deep appreciation for publisher Devolver Digital.

Pikuniku items