LocoRoco 1 & 2

There are games that try to be cool, edgy and grown-up. And then there's LocoRoco, which wants only one thing — to make you smile. And it succeeds at it with complete ease from the very first second.

The premise is delightfully simple and yet brilliant. You don't control the character directly. Instead, you tilt the whole world using the L and R shoulder buttons, so the yellow gelatinous blob called LocoRoco rolls, slides and bounces across the landscape according to gravity. A button press makes it hop, gathering fruit makes it grow and split into a swarm of small blobs, which merge back into one big one as needed. The goal is to get from point A to point B, collect as much as possible and soak up that infectious good mood.

The magic of LocoRoco, however, is above all sensory. The music sung in a made-up language, joined by the LocoRoco themselves with their chirping voices, is among the most infectious melodies ever heard in gaming history. The radiant, rounded and adorable art style looks like a fairy tale for the youngest, but the level design hides surprisingly clever physics puzzles and secret paths that will please players eager to explore.

The second entry, released two years later, took the proven foundation and added new abilities, more elaborate levels and an even richer spectacle without losing any of the original charm. Together they form a duo that showed the PSP from its friendliest and most playful side.

LocoRoco is proof that joy can be designed. It's not a game about performance or scores — it's a little good-mood generator you return to at exactly those moments when you need the world to light up a little again.

Why play it: Pure, unadulterated joy in the form of a physics platformer with infectious music — the perfect cure for a bad mood.