Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game

My first impression of Cricket was surprise that something this emotionally precise came from what is sometimes a one-person development team. Studio Kumiho spent years building this, and you can feel every one of them in the craft: the hand-drawn, cel-shaded characters wobble with the kinetic energy of actual children, the environments pop with hand-placed detail, and the whole thing carries the visual warmth of a Saturday morning cartoon block you can't quite place but deeply remember. The story follows Jae, a quietly devastated kid living alone after losing his mother to cancer, who ends up on a moon-bound quest to reach Yimmelia, a fabled place rumored to grant any wish. What unfolds is a tonal balancing act that most studios with ten times the budget couldn't pull off. Childhood grief sits side by side with boss fights against giant robotic starfish and an army of sentient flowers led by a militaristic dandelion. It never feels cheap. The party that assembles around Jae, including the emotionally armored Zack, the brilliant and overlooked Charlie, and the bullied Twila, each carries their own specific wound. The writing handles these character threads with a sincerity that reads less like a game script and more like a developer's diary. Combat sits comfortably in the EarthBound-meets-Super-Mario-RPG lineage. Battles are turn-based but kept alive through timed button presses: nail the timing to deal more damage or fully parry an incoming hit. The Tide Bar adds a second layer, building through well-timed attacks and blocks to enable stronger moves, while enemies build their own Tide Bar and hit back accordingly. Party members grow closer through battle, and increasing friendship levels unlock cooperative team-up abilities that outclass anything a solo character can do. Then there is the Notoriety Meter: harass enough NPCs in the overworld by bumping into them or throwing objects, and enemies get tougher but drop better rewards and more XP, giving grind-averse players a handy risk-reward dial. The weapons themselves lean into the absurdity: a rake, a traffic cone, a road cone swing that lands with a genuinely funny sound effect. The rough edges are real. The save system borrows from elder JRPG design in a way many modern players will find punishing: no autosave, no pre-boss checkpoints, and some areas place save points far apart. Enemy respawn rates are aggressive enough that backtracking can turn into a grinding loop faster than feels fair. A few systems, including character-specific skill tokens and the friendship level mechanic, are never formally explained, so curious players will discover them by accident or not at all. The difficulty overall leans accessible, which some reviewers flagged as reducing combat stakes in the back half. For anyone who grew up on EarthBound and Super Mario RPG and has spent years searching for something that scratches both itches at once, Cricket is the rare small game that lands the feeling. The soundtrack by Shane Mesa is a genuine standout, shifting from ambient small-town wandering to chaotic boss themes that feel less like warnings and more like invitations to settle in. This game knows exactly what it wants to say about grief, friendship, and childhood's particular flavor of chaos. It earns its emotional moments honestly. Kai, Scout Team