Sutte Hakkun (1997)

Sutte Hakkun is an adorable game with a difficulty curve that's truly fiendish, but does an excellent job easing the player in and providing plenty of built-in tools to help learn these systems to prepare for the big leagues.

The player controls a sweet lil' blob bird named Hakkun as he collects rainbow shards scattered across 100+ stages in order to restore rainbow bridges to return home. These stages are gathered into 10 world (plus secrets!) that can be tackled in any order in groups of a few worlds at a time. Hakkun moves and jumps like a 2D platformer but can stick his beak out to siphon paint from jars and use it to paint blocks and fellow creatures. Each color (red, blue, yellow) imbues the object with a specific property for movement - blocks move simply in verticals, horizontals, and diagonals but the pesky Makkun has more complicated behaviors in store, and other -kun characters require their own special handling.

The game starts out simply enough - place blocks carefully, paint them as needed, and make sure the player doesn't get stuck. If they do, the game has a handy quick save function and a hint system that truly saves lives later on when the game gets very complicated. The kicker for these is that actions take away from score and hint systems apply a penalty. If you're stuck easily and need a little push in the right direction the points may as well be ignored but if you're looking to figure out a stage efficiently every action counts, and Hakkun has pixel-perfect physics that are both fairly difficult to manage precisely (see: every time I accidentally hit my head against the ceiling on a tight jump) and also rewarding in the emergent ways that players can manipulate objects to squeeze past tight areas and vertical shafts.

The design on each level is a surprisingly balanced curve and ingeniously designed, with levels teaching new maneuvers that weren't obvious from the get-go. While playing the game the player can find secret race stages and post-game offers even more challenges to give those thirsty for perfectionism a fresh take on replays. Given that hints and quicksaves are always there to help players who have trouble the frustration is pretty much up to the player's choice which is wonderfully flexible design.

Visually and aurally the game is bright, happy, and cute. Hakkun and his friends have fun faces and compact designs that fit the block size of the game and apart from the distinct primary colors that consist of abilities Hakkun gets lush grasslands, prairies, mountains, snowfields, etc - nothing too crazy but the backgrounds are very pretty. The quality of music varies, with level clear jingles that really jazz the player up and inoffensive light-hearted tunes for most stages.

Sutte Hakkun is a disarmingly sweet presentation that hides some maddening difficulty, but a responsible player can see that only pride keeps gameplay from being a good time. Anyone can pick this up and attack this at their own skill level, learning with tightly made design and some truly satisfying challenges.