Tamiku is a weird little game from indie dev Josyan and publisher Ratalaika Games. You’re a weird looking guy in an outfit that looks like it was stolen straight from Finn of Adventure Time and you destroyed your entire homeworld for fun, so you’re off in a spaceship going places to destroy more stuff. Why? Because it’s fun! But as the destroyer of worlds, your goal here is to, well, um, pop balloons.
Yup. That’s what you do in Tamiku. You pop balloons. Lots of balloons. Blue balloons and even…*gasp* red balloons! The whole time you’re popping balloons, there’s a timer counting down, there’s a variety of enemies, and the occasional bonus item pops up here and there. Tamiku is set up like a classic 80s arcade game, even going so far as to boot to a black and white grid while loading, a staple of the vintage arcade PCB. The graphics are also suitably 80s, with each level consisting of a static screen with platforms, enemies, and a bunch of balloons. There’s really not much to see here, no story of note, and no real complexity.
In Tamiku, you can’t attack enemies, you just have to dodge them. Aside from running away and popping blue balloons by running through them, the only other thing you can do is blow up a red balloon until it bursts, often giving an extra bonus as well. Wheeeeee! Aside from jumping around and puffing on balloons to burst them, there’s really nothing else to do. Pop all the balloons on a stage, move on to the next. Don’t worry, the enemies have nasty patterns and follow you about as well as launching a variety of projectiles so you’ll still be struggling a bit. Ultimately though, there’s no real challenge here. Tamiku is a light game that has minimal interactivity, decently responsive controls, and not much else going for it.
If you don’t get bored too easily, eventually you’ll reach the fourth stage and get a bonus round where you fly Tamiku around with a balloon and use him to pop other balloons for a score bonus that you’ll promptly lose when you end up cornered by a bunch of enemies. Not the best way to set up your levels but only the fastest reflexes and most skilled players will be playing for score in Tamiku and honestly, most of those players won’t bother with a game like this. Finish the 8th level and there’s another bonus round…oh and you beat the game. Yup, eight static stages and then the game loops back to Stage 1 on a harder difficulty with more red balloons that you have to over-inflate and burst. Definitely not the most creative game out there, and there’s not a lot of depth, but it’s only $5 and you kind of get what you pay for here.
Tamiku is a simple arcade style game with limited replay value and a light to moderate difficulty level. You can tweak the visuals to look like and old-school CRT so it’s even more arcade-like, but it feels kind of unnecessary. There’s really nothing innovative here and you might get a few hours out of it, but this isn’t going to be a title to come back to over and over. For five bucks you can do worse, but you can probably do better too. But hey, if you really, really like popping balloons over and over again, give it a go!
This review was based on a digital copy of Tamiku provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and was equally mediocre on both. Tamiku is also available for Steam, Itch.io, PS4, and Xbox One for some reason. All screenshots are of actual gameplay.