Pipo

There's something both wonderfully surreal and familiar about Pipo in that it captures the feeling of stumbling around a house as a curiosity driven toddler trying to explore every nook and cranny of their surroundings. We as the player may identify a room or what a specific appliance aught to be used for, but to this little pink gremlin we play as, everything is a colorful abstract mesh of shapes and sounds to be poked, prodded and climbed on. The art style has a very Hylics 1-esque aesthetic to it with all the bright, pastel colors and mid 90s-adventure game style animations. Everything comes together with targeted bits of weirdness that make me question if this game is supposed to take place in a suburban house or an alien planet.

I think anyone who enjoys quirky, indie sprite-based RPGs will enjoy messing around in Pipo, even if the experience is very short and there isn't a complicated battle system or dramatic, involved plot. It all feels very inspired, especially compared to a lot of the other adventure RPGs I see published on this platform, and I'm very interested in whatever game projects shtanishki decides to work on next. Unfortunately the Russian game description and lack of detail on this page in general will probably cause Pipo to be overlooked by English-speaking players who might otherwise try this out. If you're one of those players looking at this page, just use the bottom download link- there's very little dialogue in this game, but the "pipo.zip" file has an English translation for what dialogue there is that's perfectly serviceable.