After a bit of whacking at vases and popping enemies, you'll unlock the ability to head back into the human town to do some bidnizz with the denizens there. You can buy sweets from the baker that'll act as restoratives, trade in medals earned from beating levels for special items, and, most useful of all, pick up new items to wear (as well as upgrade the ones you've gotten) and buy new moves for your drill. Parin's normal attacks are bolstered by a quick dodge move, and using the two together often yields some powerful results. If you can get a lock on enemies -- particularly airborne ones -- Parin can also do a leaping attack and, if she connects, can jump and continue things indefinitely so long as there's something to hit.

Again, the visuals in the game are damned impressive, not just because it all runs at a smooth framerate, but that the art design of the world is so... cute. Parin's animations are smooth and varied, but oddly enough the rest of the characters seem to move with about 1/10 of the frames of animation. It's not that the rest of the world bogs down, just that for whatever reason everyone other than Parin seems to hitch along. Bizarre...

Much has been made of the game's voice actors, but we didn't really play enough of the game to come away with the impression that it was on the level of some of the cartoons and other games that the voice cast has contributed. It's entirely possible, though, that we just didn't get into the more voice-heavy bits.

The PSP is still in need of solid platformers. Games like Daxter was a good start, but the system still needs more third-party gems. Fortunately, from what little we played, Gurumin seemed solid enough that it overcame one of the biggest problems: a nasty camera (in fact, you can pause the game and still move the camera with the shoulders). If the rest of the game ends up as adorably cheery and solid, we could be looking at the first great platformer of 2007. We'll have a full review in a few days.