The gameplay mechanics of Toki Tori 2+ are quite possibly the most simple of any game that I can recall ever playing, boiling down to only two abilities other than the short-legged stubby movement of the chicken you control. You can tweet a little birdsong and you can flop to the ground causing a kind of a shockwave. And yet, at the same time as being exceedingly simple, the puzzles of the game, using these two abilities as the basis of each of their solutions, become increasingly and surprisingly complex and challenging.
Where the game’s complexities arise are in the way your simple abilities interact with the world around you. Your tweet can be used to draw other creatures of the lush forest you traverse toward you, or your stomp can be used to startle them or push them away. You can also learn specific song patterns. The first one you learn is the rewind song, which allows you to go back to the last checkpoint if you manage to get yourself stuck. There are others that you learn as you go, which allow you to gain access to areas that you previously couldn’t get to. Apparently it is quite possible to get anywhere in the game from the very beginning, if you have the knowledge to do so, but the progression is built into the game as you have to learn (as the player, not the chicken) the various skills available to you.
The world around you is beautiful, green and full of life. While most of the creatures you come in contact with in the beginning portions of the game aren’t interested in hurting you, there are plenty of obstacles that will come between you and your goals. Even an elevation change of more than one simple step is enough to stop you in your tracks. But, you quickly learn, for example, that if you can get a frog to eat a slug, and then startle him, he’ll blow a bubble, which will pick you up and carry you over a short distance. There are bigger birds that, if they see you, will pick you up and carry you to their nests. There are crabs that have blocks for shells that you can call toward you or scare away. Each of these things combine together to give you the tools you need to traverse the land and get to the gates that will lead you ever onward toward your final goal.
The final goal? There’s some kind of evil black substance that is invading the land and bringing death and ugliness with it. You can plug up the smaller eruptions of this substance as you go, but you must get to the heart of the problem in order to save the forest once and for all.
The amazing thing that happens with Toki Tori 2+ is that when you first start and realize the only two things you are capable of as a lowly little chicken, you quickly start to think that there is no way that you could have any impact whatsoever on the world around you, and that everything must be a huge threat to you, since you have no way of fighting back. But, what you start to realize and understand is that using the tools that you have, and the wits in your brain, you can do so much more than it seems, even as something as seemingly insignificant and powerless as a little chicken.
For some reason, that message really resonated with me. It is only emboldened by the cute and cartoony art direction that the game has, which really makes the whole world around you feel very beautiful and worth saving. Then, when the evil black substance begins interjecting itself into the environment, you really notice the ugliness that it brings with it, which only serves to strengthen your resolve to stop it.
I honestly thought that Toki Tori 2+ looked silly and not worth my time when I first looked at it, but after playing it for a short time, I quickly fell in love with the main character, the world, and the story. It is so simply delivered and yet so powerful. For fans of puzzle games, I can’t recommend this one enough.
