Chulip is the quirkiest video game I’ve ever played by far, and I adore it for that. You play as a poor boy who moves with his dad from the big city to Long Life Town, where everyone is more than happy to gossip about you. Our protagonist is immediately smitten with a girl who lives nearby, and soon learns that in this bizarre little town, people build their reputations by exchanging kisses.
It’s a weird game that is part life sim, part puzzle game. You go around town, getting to know your new neighbors and trying to figure out how to impress them to get smooched. Kisses give you more hearts, allowing you to take more damage. And you will take plenty of damage and even die frequently, as many people you try to kiss and even random objects around town like playground swings can hurt you. The game even has a constantly running clock, with NPCs and trains having their own schedules. As you get to know more people, you’ll gain access to new areas and have some crazy little adventures like contacting aliens and helping break a family curse.
What makes Chulip one of my favorite games is how it marries silly vibes with heartfelt themes. One character is a utility pole with a human face and legs; he also has a personal arc that involves introspection about what truly makes a person happy in a society where everyone is obsessed with money. Another character is a failed filmmaker who refuses to get a job that can provide for his family, leading to a strained relationship with his wife. You’ll walk in on them having a heated argument, and then a moment later be fishing poop out of a trash can to sell at the local secondhand store. A little while later, you’ll be talking to a zombie about the tragic circumstances of her death and her eyeball will fall out of place with a comedic splat. All of the people you meet on your journey have their own personal problems, and it feels good to help them.
There is no other game quite like Chulip. It’s funny, sometimes frustrating, and surprisingly sincere. Some kisses are easy to get, while others will take forever to figure out or require good luck. The cast is large and memorable, and Long Life Town is one of my absolute favorite locations in a video game. It’s a very comfy experience, and the emphasis on love makes it my favorite game to play around Valentine’s Day.
One of my favorite figures in the video game industry is a man who doesn’t really get much attention. He isn’t as famous as someone like Hideo Kojima or Neil Druckmann, but he’s directed, produced and designed some of my most loved games. Yoshiro Kimura’s career has spanned nearly 30 years, running the gamut from working for large companies such as Squaresoft and Marvelous Entertainment to founding two different independent game studios (including Onion Games, his current studio).
Kimura’s work is characterized by whimsical, silly art styles and surreal stories. He has said before that some of his games are inspired by his belief that there isn’t enough love in the world, a sentiment with which I can agree. This design philosophy is evident in the core gameplay mechanics he employs in games like Chulip and Mon Amour, both of which involve kissing people in lieu of combat. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure has all the trappings of a typical JRPG, but tasks the player with cleaning up the mess left behind by the traditional “hero”, who is viewed as a menace by the citizens of the fantasy kingdom due to all the killing and chaos his adventure brings.
Mon Amour is a Flappy Bird-esque game where you must fly across the screen and kiss the person waiting on the other side.
I’ve written about my love of Chulipbefore, but here’s a quick recap. It’s a PS2 adventure game about a boy and his father moving to a small town in the countryside. They are falsely implicated in a theft and deemed untrustworthy by the townspeople, so the boy sets about helping his new neighbors solve their problems to clear his name and earn the love of the girl he likes. You level up by kissing the various residents of Long Life Town, each person requiring specific conditions be met in order to like you enough to pucker up. Most of the kisses are awarded for simple tasks like listening to a musician play his music box, but major characters need you to help them with such hefty matters as salvaging their troubled marriage or finding closure while dealing with grief. One of the main themes is teachers being overworked and underpaid, and how that negatively affects everyone. It’s an utterly bizarre game, but one I find very charming and heartfelt underneath the quirky veneer.
Our hero’s humble abode.
Some of Kimura’s games are more straightforward in the gameplay department and overtly silly. Dandy Dungeon: Legend of Brave Yamada is a simple dungeon crawler where you draw a line through each mazelike room to lead the protagonist to the exit, with monsters scattered about to provide some basic combat. The charm of the game lies in its presentation. Dandy Dungeon is a game within a game; the protagonist is a disgruntled programmer from a video game company who vents his frustrations by making his own game and incorporates people from his life into it as allies and adversaries. Who can’t relate to thinking of your mean boss as a “boss” in the JRPG sense?
I have a feeling this is a relatable sentiment to many people.
Little King’s Story is very similar to Pikmin. You take on the role of a pint-sized monarch who must expand his territory, rid the land of monsters and keep the citizens happy. You send soldiers out into the fields with you and command them to fling themselves at enemies much like Captain Olimar. It’s a pretty stark contrast to the likes of Chulip, but Kimura’s trademark quirkiness shines through. The character models and environments are simple yet colorful and cutscenes are presented like watercolor paintings, giving the game a happy, dreamy atmosphere. The kingdom’s church, where citizens get married, is dedicated to the worship of soup and led by Father Kampbell, who ends his prayers with “Ramen”. Whenever your army defeats a major foe, the next day will be a festival in the town square. Characters’ dialogue and behavior is lighthearted and cheery, and the whole thing comes together to create a fun and very charming little game.
The citizens dance in the town square during the festival.
Yoshiro Kimura’s work in the video game industry isn’t widely known outside of niche enthusiast circles, but he’s made some of my all-time favorite games and I appreciate the independent spirit he brings to the industry. I’d love to see more games made with his emphasis on fun and earnest simplicity, where you can clearly see the creator’s unique perspective shining through. These games are a far cry from the “designed by committee” feeling often attributed to the modern video game industry’s output, and I’m hopeful the current openness to indie games we’re seeing in the industry leads to more offbeat creators like Kimura finding their place in this medium.
Have you ever fallen in love with a game despite how “bad” it is? Maybe it has an unbalanced difficulty curve, maybe it has serious quality control issues or wears its very low budget on its sleeve, but it has that certain something that keeps you engaged. You can recognize its many glaring flaws, but it’s just so charming you can’t help but be enthralled by it. For me, that game is Chulip, a quirky PS2 adventure game that blends completely broken gameplay with a unique world and endearing characters.
Some characters are bizarrely anthropomorphized.
I first heard of Chulip when it was reviewed on G4TV’s X-Play way back in 2007. The game received a bog-standard 3/5 score and was noted to be tedious and full of trial-and-error gameplay in the review, but I was fascinated by the strange game on the TV screen. During a trip to GameStop shortly thereafter, I bought Chulip and fell in love. As it turns out, the game was actually a GameStop exclusive in the US and a late release, having come out in Japan in 2002. Physical copies of the American release are fairly rare nowadays, though it was added to the digital PS2 Classics line on PS3.
Our story begins with a boy on a grassy hill. He and the girl of his dreams have met at the Lover’s Tree, a local landmark where people profess their love for one another. The Lover’s Tree proclaims them a couple and then instructs them to kiss, not unlike a marriage ceremony. Then, our protagonist wakes up. It was all a dream. In the real world, the young boy and his father have just moved to a small town in the countryside. They have a tiny house, little money and the suspicion of their new neighbors, who assume they must have done something bad or irresponsible to leave a big city for Long Life Town.
Our hero’s humble abode during unpacking.
After unsuccessfully attempting to woo the girl from his dream with a kiss and a poorly-written love letter, the boy meets a man with a paintbrush for a head who offers to teach him about love. He has a love letter set that is guaranteed to help the user write an amazing love letter, but it is stolen by a disgruntled teacher from the local high school before he can gift it to the boy. To make matters worse, the teacher left a huge rock on the town’s only train tracks, preventing anyone from traveling, and the prime suspects in this crime are the new residents! Eager to clear his name and earn the trust of the girl he likes, the boy begins his lessons without the coveted letter set. He learns that people in Long Life Town earn respect and prove themselves by kissing each other. It isn’t as easy as it sounds, however. In order to kiss each resident, our hero will have to figure out what makes them happy. Once he has kissed enough people, he will prove himself to the people of the town, and hopefully find love.
This is how you get to know people in Long Life Town.
I think it’s obvious to anyone still reading that Chulip is a very strange game. Its core gameplay loop consists of meeting a variety of quirky townspeople, earning their friendship by doing things for them ranging from simple tasks to long sidequests and finally snagging kisses from them. The boy’s quest for love takes him to a rural farming community with a living scarecrow and a sniper among its residents, a Buddhist temple with ghosts and zombies in its midst and a city populated entirely by overworked and unhappy factory employees. Along the way, players will be tasked with sidequests that involve such objectives as learning how to properly take a bath, making contact with aliens, getting a starving artist hired and fired from the aforementioned factory and helping a monk break a family curse. The world of the game is surreal, and that’s what I love about it. I can honestly say I’ve never played anything quite like it.
You will visit Mr. Cheapot frequently during your adventure.
So what’s so bad about the game? Adam Sessler was right; the gameplay is absolutely rife with trial-and-error progression. The game is so confusing and unclear in many of its objectives, including main story quests, that the manual includes a full strategy guide. Without seeing solutions to puzzles laid out in plain black and white, I doubt most players would ever beat the game. The difficulty curve can be steep, as well. Even if you figure out the puzzles, you have a high chance of experiencing seemingly random deaths as you explore the world. The primary means of earning money in the game is by digging through trash cans and selling your finds to the local second-hand store. The only problem is that what you grab from each trash can is somewhat random and includes poop, which damages you upon being grabbed. The Long Life Town playground is also full of deadly hazards thanks to its shoddy equipment, meaning that attempting to ride a swing or climb on the jungle gym could kill you. You can randomly take damage from receiving hate mail in your mailbox or getting a bad omen from the local fortune teller. Further, trying to kiss any character who isn’t happy will result in them slapping the player and dealing a variable amount of damage. Sometimes, the window to kiss a given resident will be only a second or two during each appearance. The protagonist only starts with 5 hearts, so even a single hazard early on can be deadly. Bear in mind, this is a PS2 game with no auto-save features.
This is what you can expect if you kiss someone without permission.
Tedium also comes into play rather frequently. Each character has their own schedule they follow throughout the day, making some kisses require careful planning or devoting entire in-game days to set up. This system also leads to plenty of downtime during the game, where the player may be stuck waiting multiple in-game hours for an NPC to go somewhere or do something that will let the player trigger the next step of their personal quest. The importance of the in-manual strategy guide really can’t be understated. Without it, I likely never would have figured out when some characters appear or what causes their quests to advance.
Chulip has many glaring issues with its difficulty and structure, but I adore it. It is honestly one of my favorite games. Underneath the rough exterior lies a game with some interesting things to say about life. One character learns that sacrificing his happiness for a stable career isn’t worth it. A deadbeat husband and his jaded wife have to work through their issues and recapture the love they once felt for each other. Another character gets closure over the tragic death of his girlfriend thanks to the hero’s actions. I read once that the creator made the game because he felt there wasn’t enough love in the world, and I agree with him. Chulip is a bizarre vehicle for such a message, but it wouldn’t be as charming or memorable to me without its oddities. Therefore, it is my favorite bad game.
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