Kiwanuka — Critical Play: Puzzles
Kiwanuka is an action-puzzle game with an entirely new game-mechanic designed uniquely for touch screen. The game is unique, whimsical, magical, and enchanting.
Reminiscent of a Lemmings-esque game, with a primary focus on puzzles rather than powers, you play as a wizard who wields a mystical electric staff, used to co-ordinate a horde of pixelated characters around each level, with the aim of rescuing one of your numerous imprisoned acolytes. (toucharcade)
The core mechanics of Kiwanuka is to drag and create a tower using the lightnings given off from the partners(I’d love to call them friends in the tribe), and then gently push the tower over the edge to create a “bridge” and connect it to the other adjacent floating rock.
There’s also restrictions — sometimes there can be rocks falling off, resulting in all of the people falling into a dangerous area; and the floating rocks can also have various permutations and movements to make each level challenging and attractive.
As the game advances, it becomes correspondingly difficult to figure out how to solve all the drops, gaps and various other hazards, but the clean game mechanism and the intuitive controls well conceal what is intrinsically a complicatedly-designed puzzle game.
To me, the most fascinating aspect of Kiwanuka should be the beautifully and delicately designed visuals. In Kiwanuka, every step taken can produce a piece of artwork — the glorious lightnings, the artistic animations, as well as the cute drawings of the characters. With these enchanting visuals and the hidden story similar to saving a whole tribe, I really couldn’t help myself to open it again and again until the end.
