Using a story plot that is cliche and matching it with a quirky art style, developers TurtleBlaze has released a very easy eye-catcher with their latest game Kunai. This fast-paced action-adventure takes you through a variety of platforming segments, skill-based fights, and throws in a variety of weapons for you to use along the way. This game is a Metroidvania of its own style with a recipe that was well formulated.

Story

Take part in the fight against a robot uprising! Play as Tabby, a tablet that is powerful enough to take down his enemies using his kunai and ninja parkour skills. The only way to bring an end to the uprising is to take down Lemonkus, the AI-gone-evil that is trying to wipe out all of humanity!

Gameplay

Starting out with nothing, you are guided through a short movement tutorial hallway that leads you to your main weapon, a sword. From the moment you get that weapon, the formula for the game will be revealed as you find yourself fighting a boss shortly after getting it. This will be the same every time you find a new weapon, which is a nice way to force the player to learn the weapon and start utilizing it. The fights always went from crazy hard to understandably difficult once I started working with the new tools I just collected.

The pathways between each section of the game are littered with a variety of enemies. These enemies gradually get more difficult to face off against as you progress further, but the upgrades you purchase help you handle them with ease. You will want to understand the best way to defeat each enemy though as it isn’t uncommon for you to be facing off against a group of them.

As far as upgrades go, you collect coins when you defeat enemies. These are the coins you use to purchase the upgrades for your different weapons. At first, it will seem like you don’t get enough, but you will find that the number accumulates quickly. Even if you die, you don’t lose any actual progress nor coins, you are just sent to your last save location. In order to purchase the upgrades, you will need to find a router that is in most rest areas and occasionally out on the map conveniently.

Aside from using your sword for melee action, some of the weapons you get will be guns as well. The first range weapon you get is the shuriken, which doesn’t do much damage but they do stun the enemy temporarily. From there you get the machine gun, which can be utilized as a way to cross a large gap by keeping you in the air or a quick way to do damage to a distant enemy. Then my favorite, the rocket launcher, which is likely to get the most use out of you even though it is given towards the end of the game. This weapon lets you get a large boost in the air with a rocket jump or just does crazy damage to any enemy it hits.

Each boss fight has its own style and unique way to be defeated as well. Don’t get stuck doing the same fighting style over and over because there may be a better way to beat them. Most of the time I did better in the fights once I started thinking more tactically than directly, which is not the first instinct with a quirky game like this.

Visuals

There is a subtle, yet effective art style used to portray the world around Tabby. It has a cartoon-like design that aids in the quirkiness of the game and makes all the violence seem less malicious. Definitely a good choice by the developers to go with this cutesy art style.

Sounds

Musically, this game is pretty catchy. Each area has its own melodic style which helps with the fun, quirky atmosphere that this game is trying to provide.

Replayability

There are a bunch of hidden areas throughout the game where you can find collectibles. The two collectibles are cosmetic based hats and health increasing heart pieces. if you are looking to 100% the game, then there is a lot of hidden rooms and tunnels to be found.

Aside from collectibles, they have a couple of side events that I never was able to complete. One room was a challenge based room that had a horde of enemies coming at me in order to complete it and the other was in a Church area that hosted a race against time obstacle course. These are two tough challenge areas that can be found in the game and are optional reasons to continue playing.

There is no new game+ mode or anything like that though.

What Could Be Better

There should be a mission log or current objective screen somewhere, even if in the menus. There was one time I came back to the game and loaded up my save just to realize I didn’t know what my current objective was. I started talking to the people in the resistance camp until I figured it out, but it would have been nice to just pull up a menu that tells me what my current goal was.

I found the “boss fights” that were really just hordes of enemies coming at you in waves to be less enthralling than fighting an actual boss with multiple stages. I can understand enemies helping the boss in the fight, but I wouldn’t make it mandatory to go through a horde of enemies more than once yet this game did it a few times.

Conclusion

Kunai is a crazy fun mixture of parkour platforming and intense combat! I really enjoyed my playthrough of the game and was happily surprised to find that it had a decent length to it. It offered a fast-paced version of classic Metroidvania combat with plenty of modern touches throughout the gameplay. Truly a game worth recommending to players that aren’t afraid of a little bit of a challenge in their action-adventure.