Here I sit, in the good ol’ U S of A, watching as everything around me goes to shit by the hands of maniacs and narcissists the likes of which feel pulled straight from a parody. Evil and corruption and grand-scale poor decision making that would make James Bond villains blush.

And during that time, I played Pikuniku. A game who’s main antagonistic force wants to level the entire world via volcano and replace it’s citizens with AI-controlled robot versions of them to create an idealistic utopia to rule over, and is accomplishing this by sucking all their resources dry while giving them “free money!” to distract them from the hostile takeover of their entire life.

Make of those two things what you will.

Pikuniku uses it’s mask of light-hearted silliness and cute lil’ guys to hide a light satire of late stage capitalism and consumer manipulation. The entire concept of “Free Money” is genuinely funny, even if the cute cartoony creatures being beside themselves with joy over it is oddly terrifying when applied to the current state of the world.

But in order for this to work, the game has to resist the urge to get entirely too heavy handed with it’s metaphors and messages. And thankfully, the magnifying glass being held up to the world isn’t burning holes through the game by getting too close to the sun in this regard. For every “…wait, that’s actually kinda messed up…” moment, is breezy and silly moments that are just there to get a chuckle out of the player. And some chuckles it surely got out of me.

So, besides social commentary by way of wobbly lil’ cartoon blobs, what IS Pikuniku? Well, it’s a pretty standard puzzle-platformer filled with the usual mini-games and quirky characters you’d expect from most indie titles of it’s kind. Wander around a small colorful world, interact with cute characters, achieve small goals, and jump your way around simple platforming challenges on your way to the end. It’s almost hard to even break down the game in any other way than just saying “it’s a puzzle platformer” and calling it a day.

Thankfully, it breaks things up just enough with a few clever mini-game segments to keep things interesting in it’s few hour run time. Since your only toolset involves kicking, most things have to be built around jumping or kicking and that’s it. Play basketball? Do it with your feet. That kind of stuff. At no point does Pikuniku feel the need to be overly ambitious and bog itself down with complications. Jump, kick, roll around and just have a fun time. And you know what, I appreciate that. Especially given it’s story elements.

There isn’t much else to say, really. Pikuniku is a brisk jaunt through a small world full of cute, wiggly characters on your way to stop capitalist sleazebags from destroying the world. It’s a quintessential “Indie Game” through and through. Well worth a playthrough just to delight in platforming through a toast themed challenge gauntlet (yes, really) and kicking people until they get really, really mad at you.

Now to rope my roommate into playing the multiplayer content…