Paku Paku

Paku Paku. The name itself tells you everything — it's clearly a derivative of something famous, and guess who actually inspired it. So here we are, looking at yet another clone in a line that spawned countless copies on MS-DOS back in the '90s and 2000s.

This is a logic puzzle game from 2011 that the creators left freely available. I'm playing on my own territory with a white background, manipulating objects, collecting stuff, counting down timers. The basic rules are always the same with these things — you take an element, place it correctly, the computer checks it and either graciously accepts it or lets you know you need to solve the logic puzzle again. Nothing magical, nothing you haven't seen a thousand times over.

I played it in a browser and felt like I was playing a game made by someone encountering the basic principles of programming for the first time and deciding to apply them to a logic puzzle. The mechanics work, the graphics are functional and straightforward, and the sound either doesn't exist or is so quiet I can't even hear it. Probably nobody orchestrated it dramatically, which is fine — you're supposed to focus on the problem, not what's playing in the background.

Paku Paku feels like a homage that nobody really cared about. You won't miss it if you play it, you won't miss it if you skip it. It's a game made by someone who wanted to make a game, not by someone who had a reason to make it. No passion, no brilliance, just logic puzzles, one after another.

Today you'd play it while waiting at the dentist and feeling like biting into something safe. It's not bad, and it's not hard. It's just logic without a story, without atmosphere, without purpose. Sometimes that's exactly what you want — and right now I expect nothing more from it.