Rakoo's Adventure Review

An original adventure running game, Rakoo’s Adventure follows young Rakoo as he abandons his safe and cozy home on the quest for love. Why? We don’t know, but he’s rather cute with his freshly picked flower and his goofy smile.

Without question, the game is beautifully designed. The distinctive and superior animated cartoon art is a delight, and gives the game its own unique personality. It’s easy to see why publisher Namco Bandai Games have picked up Rakoo’s Adventures to sell as the game just screams "high quality" throughout.

Upon loading the game initially, it must have taken a good five or ten minutes to "prepare animations" and so forth, and bizarrely, it also required connection to the internet [Editor's Note: the required installation of these extra files puts the game's install at 220 MB rather than the initial 80 or so]. However, the lengthy wait is worth it as Rakoo’s Adventures is clever, humorous, and addictive fun.

There are over 30 levels to play through, and the rules are pretty simple. The idea is just to guide Rakoo with simple one-finger gameplay whilst avoiding obstacles and enemies. Each level seems to take around one minute to complete, but there is also a bar on the user interface that shows the player just how far they have left to run to the finish line. Rakoo must collect flowers and medals as he runs, and to make things interesting there are special power-ups throughout each of the levels that can be used to his advantage. On completion of a level, and they do seemingly get more difficult as the game advances, there are small challenges that can be undertaken for extra points, which are then replaced as they are achieved.

Judging by the main menu there are supposedly more levels to be released in the near future as there is a whole world to unlock that’s inaccessible at the time of this writing. This potentially gives the game a lot more replay value, as there are a somewhat disappointing amount of levels to play through at the moment. As well as the game itself, there is also a shop where players can unlock hats or exchange flowers and purchase a variety of items such as pets and power-ups.

It is a worthy addition to anyone’s iOS library, but a word of warning: this game literally wipes all progress if the player closes the app's background process, as I myself have discovered recently. Rakoo’s Adventure is a delight to play, and although it feels a little on the shorter side, its enjoyable, quirky nature certainly makes up for it.