Drilling into Gurumin
Just a few days before the game's release, we take a peek at a near-final build of Nihon Falcom's first internal PSP project.
Published: February 2, 2007
If you're a casual gamer, or one that's not terribly old, you'll be forgiven for not knowing who Japanese developer Falcom is. The creators of the Ys series aren't terribly well known on this side of the pacific, and unless you're an RPG nut, you've probably played few of their games. That does not, however, translate into an excuse for thinking they're some knock-off developer with games you'll probably never enjoy. Quite the contrary; Ys is a fantastic action RPG -- particularly their latest release -- and their Legend of Heroes PSP RPGs... well, they're starting to improve a little.
It's their first purely internally developed and published PSP game that piqued our interest, though, particularly because it plays an awful lot like a certain other adventure game with dungeons and items to fetch for townspeople: Zelda. Except instead of an effeminate lead character carrying a big weapon you get... okay, yes, an effeminate weapon carrying a big weapon. The catch here is that the Parin, the cutesy star of Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure is female and she wields a big ass drill in place of a sword (though both shoot beams of energy when you're at full power.
The first thing that struck us about the game was just how detailed it was. The sleepy little bucolic mining town that Parin comes to after her parents ditch her to go cavorting about on adventures is rife with details; Parin's granpappy (who goes by the name Hyperbolic) and her granny live in a semi-spacious little house tucked into the corner of town, and we were able to explore a parts store and a bakery in the quaint little burg nuzzled with various little crates of veggies or garbage sacks laying around, but it was a mysterious little hole in the wall that led to the start of Parin's adventure proper.
See, she's a kid, and a precocious one at that, but being young, she actually has the ability to see monsters. Since the mining town is devoid of kids, there's been no one for the monsters to interact with, but when Parin saves a sheepish little thing from a growling dog, the two become fast friends and she takes the girl through the aforementioned hole in the wall to meet a village full of monster friends. It's here that she discovers a Arthurian drill that no monster has been able to pull from its resting place, but of course Parin does it and thus becomes the wielder of the drill.
All is peachy creamy for the girl and her monster friends until a mysterious dude and four monster pals shrouded in shadow tear reduce the village to rubble. It then falls to Parin and her drill to go out, beat up the monster mini-bosses and restore some of the lost furniture to the monster residents so they can get all shiny and happy and slowly rebuild the village as well as unveil more of the world map that gets covered in a Dark Mist when all the monsters get bummed out. It's a simple excuse to do a lot of back-and-forth, but it also gives a nice sense of progression as the monster town slowly rebuilds itself bit by bit.
Gurumin is, at heart, a simple platformer with some action elements mixed in. Parin starts with a standard attack, but this can be charged up by simply holding the attack button for a couple of seconds. The longer you hold, the more powerful the attack, but there's a catch. The drill gets its mojo from, well, drilling stuff, and if you get hit, the meter goes down, reducing the power until you can level it up, meaning you'll either have to break stuff like trees or pottery or stone walls, or just dig up special holes to get the full juice back.
It's their first purely internally developed and published PSP game that piqued our interest, though, particularly because it plays an awful lot like a certain other adventure game with dungeons and items to fetch for townspeople: Zelda. Except instead of an effeminate lead character carrying a big weapon you get... okay, yes, an effeminate weapon carrying a big weapon. The catch here is that the Parin, the cutesy star of Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure is female and she wields a big ass drill in place of a sword (though both shoot beams of energy when you're at full power.
The first thing that struck us about the game was just how detailed it was. The sleepy little bucolic mining town that Parin comes to after her parents ditch her to go cavorting about on adventures is rife with details; Parin's granpappy (who goes by the name Hyperbolic) and her granny live in a semi-spacious little house tucked into the corner of town, and we were able to explore a parts store and a bakery in the quaint little burg nuzzled with various little crates of veggies or garbage sacks laying around, but it was a mysterious little hole in the wall that led to the start of Parin's adventure proper.
See, she's a kid, and a precocious one at that, but being young, she actually has the ability to see monsters. Since the mining town is devoid of kids, there's been no one for the monsters to interact with, but when Parin saves a sheepish little thing from a growling dog, the two become fast friends and she takes the girl through the aforementioned hole in the wall to meet a village full of monster friends. It's here that she discovers a Arthurian drill that no monster has been able to pull from its resting place, but of course Parin does it and thus becomes the wielder of the drill.
All is peachy creamy for the girl and her monster friends until a mysterious dude and four monster pals shrouded in shadow tear reduce the village to rubble. It then falls to Parin and her drill to go out, beat up the monster mini-bosses and restore some of the lost furniture to the monster residents so they can get all shiny and happy and slowly rebuild the village as well as unveil more of the world map that gets covered in a Dark Mist when all the monsters get bummed out. It's a simple excuse to do a lot of back-and-forth, but it also gives a nice sense of progression as the monster town slowly rebuilds itself bit by bit.
Gurumin is, at heart, a simple platformer with some action elements mixed in. Parin starts with a standard attack, but this can be charged up by simply holding the attack button for a couple of seconds. The longer you hold, the more powerful the attack, but there's a catch. The drill gets its mojo from, well, drilling stuff, and if you get hit, the meter goes down, reducing the power until you can level it up, meaning you'll either have to break stuff like trees or pottery or stone walls, or just dig up special holes to get the full juice back.
