Kwirk

Before Atlus became synonymous with stylish Japanese RPGs and the Persona series, it set off into the world with a tomato. Kwirk was the very first game Atlus released internationally, and instead of demons and urban legends it offered pure, smiling logic — the hero, after all, is an anthropomorphic tomato with a hearty dose of humor.

Mechanically it is a variation on the Sokoban genre: you move across the floors of a kind of vegetable tower, and to reach the exit you have to push crates, rotate panels and overcome holes and obstacles in the right order. Each room is a self-contained puzzle chamber where a poorly executed move can jam the whole solution and force you to think a step ahead. The gradual escalation of difficulty is exactly what you want from a good logic title — it starts gently and soon you have to plan your moves like chess.

Kwirk, however, does not take itself seriously, and that is part of its charm. The slightly goofy tone, the greengrocer setting and the cute protagonist turn an otherwise austere genre into a pleasantly accessible experience. The game also offers two approaches: a story progression through the tower and a mode with randomly assembled puzzles, which practically means an endless supply of new challenges for players who cannot get enough logic.

For the monochrome Game Boy it was the ideal type of game — no demands on color, an audio show or fast reflexes, just you, the grid and your head. It is precisely such titles that made the handheld a great travel companion, when you could solve one room in a queue and another on the bus.

Today Kwirk is mainly a historically interesting curiosity — the first step of a company that later rewrote the rules of the genre RPG — and at the same time an honestly designed logic game that stands on its own.

Why play it: Clean, gradually escalating Sokoban logic with a smile on your face and an endless puzzle mode; ideal for anyone who enjoys thinking without time pressure.