Miko Adventures Puffball (PC)

Miko Adventures Puffball is a game made by one man and it shows, but I mean that in a nice way. While it does have a few negligible graphical issues and it is relatively short, it’s the genuinely sweet credits where you first get a good idea that the game was even made by one person, and that’s because a picture of Khaled appears as he thanks your for playing the game. He gives a little bit of insight on its development and, while he does need to thank some people whose graphical assets and music were used for the game, most of the credits have him thanking people close to him or even describing the way they directly inspired his work on the game. Playing this short indie title feels a little more personal after these credits pop up, but that touch doesn’t crop up til the end so the 2D platforming and its efficacy is still the more important part of this game.

 

Miko Adventures Puffball stars a bipedal raccoon named Miko whose adventure doesn’t really seem to have much direction. He stumbles across a portal one day and plunges into it, and in many of the game’s scenes he mostly seems to continue his travels by interacting with more portals. There’s a brief moment you encounter a bunny mother but then you quickly leave her behind, and while the story ends inconclusively, it wasn’t much of a story to begin with. There are some nice quotes thrown over it about the nature of travel, but the cutscenes really do sometimes boil down to just seeing Miko walk across the screen. Thankfully, once you do take control of the racoon, things do seem to have a bit more direction to them.

 

Miko Adventures Puffball is a platformer where the goal is getting to the exit of its levels, and while there are a little over 10 of them, they definitely don’t go by too quickly. Most stages are actually made up of multiple screens connected by the same portals you see in the strange scenes, and Miko Adventures Puffball quickly reveals that its main appeal are maze-like levels that are manageably compact in scope but still intricate enough that navigating them feels close to the appeal of an exploration-focused platformer. The player often needs to find keys or activate switches to open up new areas in these levels that are often fairly tall and can feature some sections just as wide, but while dying does sting because resetting to the start undoes a lot of that navigation, the size of the stages isn’t so intimidating that replaying them feels tedious.

What gives these levels a little more texture is how each stage has a few goals hanging over it that are technically optional but are achievable enough that it encourages poking around and engaging with the whole platforming space. Floating diamonds serve as the main collectible and collecting most of them is required to earn a gold medal for a stage, these placed not just to reward the player for exploring but also helping to indicate areas of interest or even hinting at how to space your jumps to cross some of the wider gaps. More interesting to find though are the secrets, the game packing in many false walls you can pass through and the hints to their inauthenticity subtle enough to not be distracting but present enough that you can often have a good hunch if a wall or floor is fake or not. Finding all the secrets will also give you a small medal after the level is completed, and if you manage to kill all of the stage’s enemies you can get a further medal.

 

All the medal tasks are fairly easy to slip into your work as you’re simply aiming to make forward progress in the level, so having these to motivate you helps justify the maze-like levels of Miko Adventures Puffball. There are a set of challenges you can view on the main menu that encourage you to be faster in stages or do certain tasks, although unless these later become Steam achievements, going for them isn’t too disconnected to be compelling despite them testing your mastery of the game’s simple but tight platforming. Miko actually controls incredibly well although mostly his only skills to worry about are running and jumping. You can perform a second midair jump and Miko can latch onto ledges, but the way Miko Adventures Puffball keeps its platforming interesting is by making it perilous even when you’re practically surrounding by level geometry. While more open exterior areas space out their jumps and make landing sometimes risky, even hopping about in a tight tunnel is made more dangerous by the placement of plenty of dangerous environmental hazards, spikes, thorns, and iridescent mushrooms all injurious to the touch.

 

Getting around requires planning when to take the second jump carefully and moving through the air properly to avoid taking damage, many dangers placed exactly where they should be to make traversal not necessarily difficult but always challenging. You can’t just rush forward blindly even though Miko is a rather speedy raccoon, the level design encouraging you to carefully press onward at a pace that is deliberate but not actually sluggish. Enemies also contribute to this greatly. Slimeballs and spiked blobs not only patrol the places you need to already carefully plan your landings for but can jump between platforms themselves, and some will even burst into poison or shrapnel when killed so you need to give them proper space. Once bird enemies are added to the picture things become even more about proceeding carefully. The birds fly towards you in a straight line from their current position and will follow your movements, and since they can pass through platforms they can get to you from angles where you can’t strike back. Miko’s attack method is, oddly enough, a fireball he fires forward, but it has a set distance and can’t be fired too rapidly or you’ll have to wait for it to recharge. It’s a rather tiny one too and many foes go down to two hits, so you need to line up and take your shots just right to repel the enemies or start moving away to ensure your own safety.

While a game world where spikes are placed where the game knows you want to jump and enemies who deny space so well sounds like it could be overwhelming, the game actually achieves a rather relaxed pace because you know there are some potent dangers ahead. You can easily move forward and only tackle a little bit of what’s inf front of you, the game rarely packing in too many dangers at once unless you’re the one brazenly pushing forward. Individually challenges are fairly light in their demands but the game is always keeping you involved as you move forward so you don’t slip up and get hurt, and while health pick-ups can be found they are spaced out so you can’t rush through hazards. The game essentially enforces that gradual pace on you while still making sure it pushes against you just enough that it doesn’t get stale. It does feel like the game runs out of new ideas fairly quickly though, some minor enemy alterations not really leading to the meaningful shifts in the kind of dangers you face that could lead to more memorable or distinct encounters.

 

While the soundtrack wasn’t made for the game, it is a well-curated set of tunes that aren’t all deliberately relaxing but still fit a game that seems to be less about reflex and more about quick little moments of planning how to proceed. The levels and characters are pretty bright, colorful, or even a little silly to make it more inviting, and while some areas like the ice level and mushroom forest aren’t too out there, the backgrounds are always pretty detailed and even feature areas inspired by candy and ice cream. Despite the look its gameplay feels a little demanding for very young players while also not being so challenging it can really use that as a major selling point.

 

Miko Adventures Puffball still puts up a bit of a fight to make the adventure worthwhile, but it briefly flirts with a mechanic that could have been a true defining feature for it rather than just solidly executing its expansive stages. In some areas you need to get your mouse in on the action, clicking and dragging rocks (or in one case bunnies) about to help with progress through the stage. Most of the time this is just a way of carrying a large boulder towards a switch, and while later appearances by the mechanic begin to make it more like a puzzle, it can sometimes just feel like a barely different way to make progress. Moving and dragging something with your mouse is a little more cumbersome than regular play and transporting it isn’t always easy since you need to handle Miko’s movements and the boulder’s at the same time, but besides a few moments where it can play into the maze-like levels it inhabits it feels like an underfed idea and one that doesn’t even appear in every stage after its introduction.

THE VERDICT: Miko Adventures Puffball asks you to explore its maze-like stages cautiously, but because Miko controls as well as he does and the hazards and enemies are placed just so, doing so feels like a rather relaxed procession of decent challenges rather than something slow or laborious. You always feel in control but the danger ahead, while not pressing, keeps you lightly involved as you have to make sure you can approach it without getting hurt. Collectibles and special goals make the small set of levels more interesting to engage with, so while some ideas like the use of the mouse feel too simple, Miko Adventures Puffball provides a light bit of difficulty to spice up an otherwise fairly tame but relaxed platformer.

 

And so, I give Miko Adventures Puffball for PC…

An OKAY rating. Blending together so many present dangers with a game that still feels breezy to play through is certainly Miko Adventures Puffball’s biggest strength. Exploring its sizeable levels doesn’t lose its luster because its always putting forth a new small moment to test your platforming or ability to handle an enemy, but it does feel like it could use a wider variety within that space. Worrying about bonking your head on a dangerous piece of the environment or dealing with the same blobby monsters remains the heart of most of the challenges throughout the game and one reason the use of the mouse to move boulders is both exciting and disappointing is it almost adds a new direction to the action. You’re better off scouting the area ahead and then moving the boulder with little resistance though so besides it sometimes veering into mild puzzle territory its presence never feels too involved. Getting around is still an involved process though and Miko feels as capable as he should be for helping you navigate the game world. His jumps are reliable and you need to space their use differently to get around, and the intentional limitations on the fireball add a complicating layer to how you approach enemies. At the same time, the design does encourage you to press forward cautiously and thus Miko Adventures Puffball can lack the exciting moments that might have elevated it further. Getting around is nice and challenging enough but the methodical approach does mean exploring areas are often more memorable for their colorful appearance than the exact challenges you face inside them.

 

Still, while it may not excel and the story is a bit odd, the design decisions do bring Miko Adventures Puffball into something decent to play if you have a hankering for a breezy but still somewhat challenging platformer that isn’t just about generically heading rightward to a level’s end. There have been many times where I reach a game’s credits or look at the behind the scenes and feel bad seeing all the people who worked on a game since I know I’m going to give it a bad rating, but Miko Adventures Puffball has just enough to it that seeing Khaled’s personal touch to the credits was just a nice treat. The credit sequence is far too late in an experience and inconsequential in regards to a game’s quality so it doesn’t have a chance of swaying the rating, but having the game end with a special bit of insight into the work of one man to get the game made lead to this simple platformer being a bit more memorable.