Game review: Kahoots - Sony PSP Minis

If you threw a ball for Kahoots, it would race off and bring the ball back before dropping it at your feet, wagging its tail and demanding that you play some more.

If you ignored it Kahoots would lick your face and rub its nose against you, vying for your affections.

It’s just that lovable. For someone not to fall for Kahoots’ charms they would need to have a heart of stone.

Kahoots, produced on a shoestring budget from the talented studio of Honeyslug, is an adorable block-moving platform puzzle game.

It was one of the launch titles recently for the new PSP Minis range available from the PlayStation store.

The 13 titles, more recently expanded to 16, provide downloadable bite-sized budget games.

Like all good puzzlers Kahoots is based on ingeniously simple yet challenging gameplay.

The aim on each of the 50 levels is to guide your cute Kahoot character from the start point to the exit.

Each level consists of a series of platforms made up of blocks. On landing on a platform your Kahoot walks from one end to the other, and back again continuously. It doesn’t fall off – unless something makes it.

You have no control over the actual movement of your Kahoot. Instead the way to manoeuvre the creature around the levels is by swapping blocks underneath its feet.

Many of the blocks are just blocks but others have useful functions. Some make your Kahoot jump on to another platform or bounce him over obstacles such as spike pits. Some of them act as trapdoors to drop him down to a platform below.

It’s not just about putting the jumps and falls in the right places while avoiding the spikes. There are other problems to contend with such as locked blocks which can’t be moved and blocks which reverse your Kahoot’s direction.

Further into the game you will come across the Cardborg, part enemy and part friend. Your Kahoot is killed on contact with a Cardborg, but at the same time the Cardborg can be manipulated to destroy certain obstacles.

Kahoots is about lateral thinking and timing - swapping the right blocks in the right order is key to success.

Additional strategy comes in using the wraparound screen to your advantage. If you send your Kahoot flying off the end of a platform it will land elsewhere on the screen, and working out where this will be is crucial to completing some levels.

As well as needing to get your Kahoot to the exit, there is a secondary objective on each stage involving collecting cupcakes which are often in hard-to-reach locations.

While a lot of the levels look simple at first glance, finding the correct route to the exit can be very tricky. It’s a bit like the well-known web game Bloons, where seeing what you need to do to complete a level is easy but actually doing it is another thing entirely.

Some levels will need repeating to get through them but, much like Bloons again, Kahoots has a sort of magnetic pull to keep you trying until you crack each one. There is a fine line between a game being addictive or frustrating, and luckily Kahoots stays on the right side.

Controls in Kahoots couldn’t be easier. There is a cursor on the screen which you move about with the direction buttons. Use the cursor to highlight a block then hold down the X button to pick it up. Still holding the X, use the D buttons to drag the block to where to want to move it.

Stripped back to its core Kahoots is a fairly standard puzzle game involving moving objects around in order to get a character from point A to B.

What greatly enhances Kahoots is its fantastically quirky design.

Though like any other game Kahoots is run by a series of computer code commands, everything in it still manages to look homemade, handcrafted and haphazard, in a nice way.

Pegbeast, a character which sings instructions between levels, looks like it could have been knitted by someone’s nan.

The backgrounds in the levels look like 70s wallpaper, while the blocks look like they have either been snatched from a toy box or at least designed by children.

The audio helps too, including the catchy little tune that plays in the game and also the various peculiar sound effects.

It all adds up to create an original, warm and very likeable style.

With a game that’s so charming (and cheap) as Kahoots it feels mean to nit-pick, but there are a few little things.

Firstly, its puzzle formula of planning, patience and perseverance won’t be to everyone’s taste. Also its style may be just a little rich and eccentric for some people’s palates. It has quaintness and cuteness in huge measures, and just like a novelty pop song it has as much potential to annoy as amuse.

There is a danger too that Kahoots may get slightly repetitive after continuous play.

My other slight concern is with its replayability value. There are hours of fun to be had with the 50 levels but should anyone complete them all and collect all the cupcakes, I’m not sure whether there would be enough appeal to play through it again.

Overall, Honeyslug deserves huge credit for designing such as an inventive and sweet game. Discovering its joys is like playing with a new toy as a kid, it’s got that same sort of innocent charm.

Even though the new PSP Minis games are low on price, they can still be high on fun – a point proved by the delightful little game that is Kahoots.

Verdict: 8 out of 10 – Enormously endearing, Kahoots is one of the stand-out games in the early PSP Minis selection, an example of a real bargain.