Game: Joojee’s Journey
Genre: Action, Adventure, Puzzle, Platformer
System: Nintendo Switch
Developers | Publishers: QUANTUM PEAKS, Digital Innovative Design and Technology Center CO., LTD. | DigiPen Game Studio
Age Rating: US E | EU 3+
Price: US $8.99 | UK £8.09 | EU € 8,99
Release Date: November 11th, 2021
Review code used, with many thanks to DigiPen Game Studios
Ever had a spat with a loved one that made you feel like the world had ended? That was so bad, you wished you could forget everything? Well, Joojee can certainly relate. Joojee’s Journey is a puzzle-platformer adventure title about memory loss and the power of friendship.
Story
The game starts off with Joojee running into her room in tears, wondering why her friend had yelled at her. She’s so upset by the unknown incident that she wishes to forget everything about her life. There’s a cut to a magic art brush before it focuses back on Joojee, who has woken up with no memories.
Her only clues as to who she is and what happened is a drawing of several animals that is labelled “My Friends” and the mysterious brush. She then leaves her house to find the depicted animals and see if they can help her recover her memories.
Gameplay
Joojee is an adventure puzzle-platformer, so the game largely consists of walking around different environments, interacting with them and the people in them, and then puzzle-platform sections. Joojee meets people and touches them with her magic brush to go into their minds – which are depicted as imaginative and fantastical platforming sections. The goal is to find 1-3 glowing turnips that represent memories.
Touching these memories helps Joojee either regain memories she shares with her friends or understands why someone is acting the way that they are so she can help them in order to get to the next section of the story. She has the ability to climb, double jump, and dash. Death will occur often, but it will merely send you back to a checkpoint with no other penalty. If the player gets stuck, a little glowing star will appear to help skip the troublesome section as an anti-frustration feature.
Controls
The controls for Joojee are rather simplistic and mostly intuitive. The jump button is B rather than the A button, like in most games, but it’s an easy adjustment. ZR controls the dash, the directional pad and joysticks direction, and A is the interact button.
There weren’t any issues controlling Joojee throughout the game. While precision was occasionally expected and just a tad bit frustrating, it wasn’t a major issue. They were easy for both adult and child to understand as I did play this game with my baby-sittee on occasion.
Art and Music
The art of Joojee’s Journey is absolutely beautiful. The soft, colorful style is pleasing to the eye and makes the game a joy to experience. My baby-sittee thought it was pretty and was always eager to jump in for both the art and story.
The music is soft and fits the story. Each track flowed well into each other. It is an instrumental soundtrack that is gentle and sweet.
Pros and Cons
The pros to this game are basically everything. The story is engaging, the characters distinct and fun to learn about, the art is gorgeous, the music is soft, and the gameplay fun and diverse. When I beat the game, it was a joy to see the completed picture of Joojee’s friends she had made. There was a beautiful sense of satisfaction.
The only cons I can think of was the fact there isn’t a way to speed up Joojee’s meandering pace as she adventures around, which means things take a little longer to do than I was happy with, and the aforementioned getting stuck on some puzzles. The skip feature was helpful though.
Conclusion
Joojee’s Journey is a fun, cosy adventure that does what it does well. The platforming is solid, the puzzles challenging yet not too complicated, and the aesthetic is just stunning. If you are looking for a short romp through a sweet world of animals, memories, and friendship, this is the game for you. I highly recommend it!
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot. 