A really short and sweet puzzle game. The ducks are cute and I felt incentive to save them just to hear the fun things they would each say. The gameplay is unique and doesn't outstay it's welcome. My only complaint is that the game neglects to tell you that you can move your vessel thing faster by pressing "B". I didn't find this a problem for most of the game but at a certain point it became required to beat certain levels and since I didn't know about it I had to look up a guide on how to beat the level, assuming I was just playing sub-optimally, only to be told of this crucial mechanic's existence, so that was fun.

Oh god. My attention was grabbed by the fact that I never got to play this game because I’m pretty sure it never came out in the US? It’s definitely very charming, with very cute character designs and aesthetics. The music was pretty good, and I kind of dug it for most of its gameplay… but then it got a little too crazy for me, and I don’t really have the patience to deal with Machine Land.

Kururin buddy I feel like you could stand to have a helicopter that doesn’t control like this, especially when there are cannons shooting at you. I don’t know why they’re shooting at you. Why is your sibling here…

I did really like collecting the customization features, though. It’d be neat to see this come back at some point. You know, for the people who gel with this kind of game better than I do.

This game is deceptively simple. You spin continuously, certain surfaces will switch your rotation and your goal is to make it to the end of each level mostly unscathed.

While I can't go into too much depth about what worked and what didn't, what I can attest to is that I entered into a fugue state while playing Kuru Kuru Kururin. What was supposed to kill half an hour ended up swallowing up my night, as I noticed the clock had ticked past midnight and my partner was readying up for bed while I grappled with the final level. It only took me 2 hours, yet felt much shorter than that even. The pace is brisk and the game never wears out its ideas, so I suppose you can take that as the highest praise imaginable.

The truth is that, while fun, the game will likely leave your thoughts almost as quickly as it entered them. A perfectly fine 7 out of 10. Quintessentially so, even! I'll definitely give the rest of the series a go too.

Kuru Kuru Kururin looks like a fun enough game from a distance, but whose main appeal reveals itself once you actually start playing. It's a great arcade-style game with a single core mechanic; navigate through a variety of obstacle courses while controlling the movement of a constantly spinning rod. There's plenty of variety across the Adventure mode, which offers a lengthy series of more involved courses, and the Challenge mode which offers more bite-sized courses.

The number of interesting courses already add plenty of depth to the main mechanic, but Kuru Kuru Kururin shines when it becomes clear that each Adventure mode course and Challenge course has a time attack element to it. There are a few tiers of course times that you can aim to beat by continuously honing your skills. An addicting feedback loop emerges as you work to best the different times because of how quickly you are able to load back into a course. It becomes a hard game to put down as you keep telling yourself, "Just one more run".

But you also don't need to engage with the Time Attack elements if you don't want to! There are multiple off-ramp points for the game depending on what you find fun about it. You can work through just the Adventure mode, just the challenge mode, or progress through as much of the time attack tiers as you wish. You'll get as much out of the game as you put into it.

Favorite Tracks:

Grasslands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22j0a2dBeHU&list=PLC1B69F7C3882D9FC&index=6

Cave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSC47hGikY0&list=PLC1B69F7C3882D9FC&index=10

Okay I love this thing but damn am I just bad or is this game hard as fuck? Probably a bit of both. I can't make it past the cave area.

I guess the birds will never be saved and will probably die a cold, lonely death. Oh well.

Played on NSO GBA

Really addictive and charming puzzle game that I’m sad wasn’t revisited again after the 2000s because the concept is so simple yet full of potential, it’d be an instant hit if they did a 99-style game for the Nintendo Switch Online service. The level design gets pretty damn tricky too by the end, you’ve no idea how much of an anxiety-inducing experience it is trying to get through the tightest of corners with a long propeller that’s constantly turning left or right.

It’s short and sweet, go play it if you have the NSO Expansion Pack, it’s one of GBA’s finest games they have in offer there.

fofo!

dificuldade em jogos sempre será um tópico muito difícil de abordar, porque em alguns casos pode servir de detrimento ao jogo e em outros ele não vive sem ela. Kuru Kuru Kururin é um que tá na lista dos últimos, fico pensando qual seria a graça se esse jogo não fizesse eu repetir a mesma fase 20x, visto que ele é curto e o desafio inteiro se resume a terminá-lo, melhorar seu tempo e/ou fazer desafios especiais. queria ter um insight melhor mas o único que eu tive foi que a Nintendo pegou o conceito de ira ira bouzu (irritating stick pros não-intimos) e resolveu que o treco ia girar também e que ia ter uns passarinhos fofos e o mundo da neve e o mundo assombrado. muito que bem pois ficou adorável.

não é algo que vemos mais fora de indies, um jogo onde a dificuldade e suas mecânicas são o que o carregam por inteiro (nenhum Souls encaixa nisso), mas é algo que volta e meia sinto falta, de mais jogos "arcade" assim.

Incredibly rewarding game that asks so much executional precision by the end, but is always fair.

(warning most of this review is actually about the Souls games, coming from someone who hasn't liked them so far and who also hasn't put more than like 4 hours total into the whole series lol)

When it comes to these sorts of skill games, I feel like I'm always going to prefer visually clean games that let you get immediately back into the action on a failure. Your obstacles are always 100% clear and every single mistake is immediately obvious and understood. There's no bloat, no wasted space or time, just pure execution.

I like to write them off a lot as a joke, but I do really think my tastes are just fundamentally incompatible with the Souls games as they currently exist. I am never going to enjoy a game that asks a lot of me, and then punishes failure with even as little as 2 seconds of waiting before I'm allowed to try again. When you're locked in, 2 seconds is a long fucking time and it will almost always knock you out of the zone.

And I feel like once you put these execution games into 3D, there's a million more things that can go wrong as far as visual clarity is concerned, and when every boss has different animations and attack patterns, it stops feeling like a challenge you can chip away at and slowly improve with. My go-to examples of mechanically challenging games that I actually like are usually Katana Zero and Celeste, but playing this I realize that it's not just the fast respawn, it's the clarity and total control that 2D offers (and also some 3D shooters, my explanation for including these would just be the same as this part of this Matthewmatosis video that explains why shooters got big during the switch to 3d so just watch that if you're interested).

Back to the topic, trying a level 40 times in Kurukuru Kururin is hardly out of the ordinary. Trying a boss in a souls game 40 times is, from what I understand, a nightmare and something you only get to if you're really having trouble with something. In Kurukuru Kururin, trying something 40 times and seeing that slow, incremental progress, getting just a bit further in the level each time, culminating in beating it? That's perfect, that's exactly what I want from games that ask me to "get good". I just don't see that happening for me with the souls games--given the time length of bosses, the actual mechanical difficulty is going to have to go down, and so the maneuvers feel less satisfying to pull off, and when you're getting knocked out of the zone every time you do make a mistake. Nightmare. "Get good" games should, ideally, maximize the amount of time spent on getting good at them, a loss is punishment enough. Kurukuru Kururin trims every single piece of fat, you're controlling a spinning rod in a maze, nothing more, nothing less, and in its simplicity it's definitely one of the best skill-based games I've played so far.

Kuru Kuru Kururin is a Nintendo game through and through. At first blush, the game appears to not have much going on; you’re in a spinny thingy and you have to maneuver it to the goal. Yet, as you go through each level, see all the tricks the game has up its sleeve, you realize… yeah, it’s a simple as hell game! Simplicity isn’t a bad thing if the core idea is strong of course.

In this game’s case, I wouldn’t consider its spinning mechanics strong enough to leave me like “oh shit, Nintendo are geniuses once again!”, but it still manages to squeeze a fun time out of what little there is to it. Each world is set apart by its own mechanical and level design focus, never substantially changing how you tackle the levels, but fresh enough to keep me from getting bored.

It’s surprisingly challenging too—perhaps to a fault. The expectations of execution precision and the length of levels by the end left me abusing rewind frequently, lest I have long given up on the game. In a way it feels very retro game-y, a short experience intended for a child to play over and over for days/weeks on end until they’ve mastered it. The design, even for it’s 2001 release, feels fairly antiquated.

Even if I don’t think it’s that good of a game, it’s undoubtedly charming: a fun little toy to beat in a couple short bursts. Nothing too mentally taxing, with cute graphics and surprisingly good music. Also, having 10 birds rest on my spinny thingy and fly around when I bump into things is wonderful.

Kuru Kuru Kururin is a delightful game where you play as a constantly spinning rod that takes damage if you touch walls or projectiles, thus making the levels play like short obstacle courses. It's a pretty quick game to get through, but optional objectives such as speedrun goals, no damage goals, and cosmetic pickups add a bit more extra taste. If I had any complaint, it would be that the very final level feels completely overboard in difficulty to the rest, with the first segment having way more tight turns and the last feeling like complete nonsense with turret spam.

Overall, definitely a fun arcade-style game worth checking out, it'll have you spinning around!