The giant inflatable multi-coloured spider demon looms towards us. My co-op partner and I unleash a barrage of bubbles towards the beast, each bubble affixing to the ball-like structure of the creature, distorting it into a misshapen nightmare version of Bertie Bassett. Once three coloured bubble balls meet, in a match-3 style, they burst, leaving our opponent missing several legs and spasming on the ground. Akin to a daddy-long-legs that just fell afoul of a particularly vindictive three-year-old. With a final whimper, the boss explodes in a brightly coloured eruption. This is totally bonkers. This is Popucom.
A third-person puzzle shooter, Popucom is intended to be played with a buddy in split-screen co-op. There’s a plot, but it amounts to little more than establishing the mission of rescuing dozens of little fried egg looking aliens. To do this, the players must navigate linear levels cram-packed with rather ingenious puzzles and colour coded bad guys made up of a load of balls.
With a series of bizarre inventions – including a drone flown by a kitten, force shields, teleportation devices and the ability to transform into a Nintendo-lawyer baiting Samus Aran ball – the two of you must work with something resembling synchronicity to overcome countless physics-based traps. Proceedings are tremendous fun, and all constructed around the simple premise of each player being able to switch between two colour types, and every interactable object or enemy to shoot being one of those corresponding four colours.
One moment, you’ll be in a purple colour configuration, walking along a purple path, holding aloft your force shield with your partner stood on top. They, in turn, are using their blue force shield to deflect blue laser beams, before switching to yellow mode to blast some yellow light-sabre wielding minion-looking dude. Suddenly, both the path and the laser beams change colour, and you and your buddy must quickly switch roles to prevent death by touching the wrong colour. It’s frenetic, furious, and often demanding, yet oh-so satisfying when you finally manage to clear a challenge that’s take several attempts.
The game starts off simple enough, but through the twelve hours of content, the difficulty soon rockets up, demanding swift reactions and expert off-screen communication to beat later levels. Thankfully, frustration is mostly alleviated by frequent and smartly placed checkpoints, though there will be some teeth-gnashing when a handful of particularly nasty challenges respawn you too far back, forcing you to get through a particularly tricky bit just to have another go at the trap that killed you.
Collision detection can be occasionally poor, with players slipping from a platform even though they just successfully made that tricky final leap. Indeed, jumping in general feels a little woolly, often failing to provide the responsiveness the game demands. Still, with numerous accessibility options to tweak, including activating temporary invulnerability and granting auto-aim, this is perfect family gaming, and something people of varying gaming abilities can enjoy.
Other than some notable frame rate drops when things get busy on screen, this is bright, bold, over-the-top brilliance. The sort of sunny fun that will effortlessly pass a rainy Sunday afternoon or two.
