Kurupoto: Cool Cool Stars
Developer: Starfish
Publisher: UFO Interactive
Platform: Nintendo DS
Release Date: September 28, 2007
Posted: August 30, 2008
The control system for the Nintendo DS opens the doors for developers to create interactive video puzzle games; Kurupoto: Cool Cool Stars is another one of those. Manipulate a playing board to return halos to lost Stars and you can take pride in restoring the night sky, I suppose.
There is a short tutorial to demonstrate the gameplay.
The moon went and caught a cold. Of course, when he sneezes he scares the Stars so bad that they fall right out of the sky and on to Kurupoto Island, home of the Kurupotos. The Kurupotos are fun-loving squares that want to help the circular Stars in any way they possibly can. In order for Stars to return to their home in the sky they each need a halo. The Kurupotos traverse their island with the Stars and search together for the missing halos.
The puzzles involved in retrieving the halos are quite simple; the player is given an enclosed square, small or large, with various walls and blocks inside. One type of Kurupoto acts as a solid barrier that will not move, where as another Kurupoto moves about the board as the Star can. To move these Kurupotos and the Star, the player rotates the board either left or right causing these units to fall if unblocked. The other icon on the game board is the glowing circular halo. That is the goal for each puzzle: to drop the Star onto the halo allowing its return to space.
There is strategy involved in solving each puzzle, and some puzzles must be restarted if the player makes a wrong move. Most puzzles can be completed in fewer than 10 moves. Completing a puzzle using the minimum number of moves awards that Star with a gold crown. Does that make you feel good?
From the menu, the player can view all of the completed and uncompleted constellations. The game's graphical representations of the constellations are cute, but the Ursas are misrepresented as foxes.
Story mode is a mere three constellations short, lasting little more than 20 minutes. Each constellation is a collection of stars, each star representing its own puzzle. The constellations in story mode are made up of no more than 8 puzzles each, but completing story mode will unlock normal mode, through which the player can complete constellations as he pleases. Constellations can be made up of as little as 2 stars, and in the later levels more than 10. After each group of constellations is completed more will appear, usually containing more stars than the previous set. In total, there are well over 100 puzzles, but as they can be beaten quickly that still does not leave much play time overall.
Unfortunately the stylus is not required to play Kurupoto: Cool Cool Stars, as the right and left triggers will suffice for controlling the board. So much for an enjoyable true Nintendo DS puzzle game; it would be best to stick with Puzzle Quest and let the Kurupotos save the Stars on their own. How absolutely unexciting does a game have to be to not have a single iota of information about it on GameFAQs after being out for a year?
TLDR: Unless you are 5 years old or can not get enough of the moving-block puzzles found in nearly every Zelda game, then do not bother with Kurupoto: Not-So-Cool Stars.
