‘Öoo’ Mini Review

Developer: Nama Takahashi | Platform: PS5 |

Playtime and Platinum: 2:50

Sometimes simplicity can lead to more exciting design than elaborate or complicated designs. Öoo is an example of that – with just two buttons it’s a brilliantly creative puzzle platformer.

The premise is delightfully simple, you are a little caterpillar who leaves his house to immediately be eaten by a big bird. Luckily for Öoo (I assume that’s their name), they can use their body segments as bombs. These bombs serve several purposes - to explode (obviously), as pressure weights or even platforms. The bomb always spawns beneath Öoo meaning things are consistent. The consistency is important as there is some ‘physics’ based gameplay, especially when the second bomb is introduced. Even when there are two, the core principal of Spawn bomb and Detonate bomb remain.

The games simple visuals help the player focus on the gameplay. Level design is incredibly clever in the way that games nine levels all feature a sort of ‘Tutorial’ to help the player get accustomed to whatever gimmick the level has. If you go in knowing, you could blast through the game in a fraction of the time.

There’s something to be said about how the game manages to innovate and expand upon it’s core idea without overcomplicating things. None of the puzzles are mindbendingly difficult but the game makes you feel clever each time you figure out how to progress.

At roughly 3 hours and only £8, you could spend an evening playing an absolutely great little puzzle platformer. It knows what it wants to be an executes it perfectly.