Doki-Doki Universe review: have a heart

Doki-Doki Universe has the aesthetic of a quickly scribbled children's drawing, a look that supports an imaginative array of bizarre characters and locations. Each planet comes with its own goofy premise, such as Aminal, a place where humans are pets and a charming capybara is the master. Or there's Yuckers, an intergalactic dump site comprised mostly of poop, where the locals prize terrible-smelling goods above all else. I never knew what to expect in each new world, and it was always a wonderful experience of light-hearted discovery. Except for the handful of times that it got a little uncomfortable.

For the most part Doki-Doki Universe sticks to harmlessly goofy settings like the aforementioned poo planet, but a few of the locales are cartoon versions of real-world places. One of them felt especially weird — Afri, Doki-Doki's take on Africa, complete with dark-skinned tribal people living in huts who are amazed by technology and think that it's magic.

If that's not disturbing enough, goals on that planet include bringing a lonely tribesman two women — a small girl to be his daughter and an adult to be his wife. Doki-Doki Universe may trade in absurdities, but this questionable content still bothered me.

The rest of the game stays more firmly in off-the-wall weirdness territory, even in its core gameplay. As you explore planets and get quests from characters, you solve their problems by creating items out of thin air using a resource called "dust bunnies." It's basically the inventory puzzles of classic adventure games taken to an extreme: There are a total of over 300 items in Doki-Doki Universe, and once you've found one, you can summon it at any time for any character.

The game opts for imagination over difficulty with its puzzles. Need something to cheer up a melting snowman who's been teleported away from his ice planet? Anything cold or refreshing will do the trick. Need a tree to provide shade in a sweltering desert? You'll have plenty of trees of different styles to choose between. I enjoyed experimenting and trying to pick out the weirdest possible solutions from my vast list of items rather than being expected to find a specific thing. And though the puzzles were never much of a challenge, the game swept me through interesting levels and characters quickly enough that it never felt tedious.