Become a travelling monk in Oku, and complete your journey by assembling haiku-like poems and exploring secret paths.
When it comes to platformers, I like two things: New twists on classic techniques and collectibles that guide you around the world. Handily, then, Oku features both of these, and it does so in a way that will stick with you long after you put the controller down, and all within a beautiful setting.
In Oku you take on the role of a monk who is following in their footsteps of their master. You’ll traverse the beautiful, water-coloured world through dashing and jumping — however, while it does loosely resemble your average 3D-platformer, you’ll be dashing over the surface of water and jumping from cloud to cloud in no time. The collectable here isn’t rings, coins or obscure-ium though, instead it helps guide you to finding more ink.
Ink is what you need for Oku‘s puzzle solving element, and that’s because you’ll be making haiku. In order to progress beyond certain points — be that the main, exploration path, or through the secret paths discovered through climbing clouds or following the trails created by blooming lotus’ — you’ll need to submit poems that include certain keywords.
You’ll gather these keywords through looking around the world, gathering up nouns like Stork, Cherry Blossom and Waterfall. You’ll then use them to fill in stanzas by selecting the line format (which you can unlock more of later) then placing the nouns that you’ve gathered, as well as verbs, into the sentence. Do that three times and you’re away; Poem complete and path unlocked. The real puzzle element is the gathering of the nouns, rather than using them — but I’m all for it, and I genuinely hope that more games actually have you do SOMETHING with the ‘key’ to the ‘door’ as Oku have here.
I played Oku while at Devcom, where developer Irox Games had rigged a thermal printer up to their demo machine. But, I think that it’s a game that would have stuck with me even if I didn’t currently have little print-outs of my poetic solutions (as the crane feels, as the waterfall touches, cascading and delicate). Apparently, on release, you’ll also be able to find the poems created by other players, and leave yours behind in kind.
Oku will be available for PC when it releases.
