Kunai: The coolest tablet you’re likely to meet.

As I’ve worked my way through the must-play Metroidvanias (with one very obvious omission still sitting in my backlog), I’ve started digging into the genre’s hidden gems. But beneath even those are the games that seem to have been left behind, not always undeservedly, but sometimes unfairly. Kunai falls into the latter camp: a game with mostly the right ingredients.

Kunai starts with a setup that has become all too familiar even before 2025: humanity’s rapid advancement leads to its near-extinction at the hands of robots/AI. A dwindling human resistance clings to hope, placing its hope in an unlikely hero, a cheerful, ninja-like tablet to thwart the AI takeover. The game is charming with a pinch of eccentricity (not on the level of 12 Monkeys, though), and the story beats are well paced throughout.

If you are here for the type of exploration only a Metroidvania can offer, Kunai has it, but to a lesser extent compared to the heavy hitters. There are branching paths and some gated areas to be reached by future upgrades, but something felt lacking, and it hit me about halfway through.

My main gripe with the game is that many of the hidden treasures were lame and not worth the effort. There are health upgrades, but the money rewards were generally underwhelming, and the worst offenders were the hats. What do they do? Not much, they change the appearance of Tabby, nothing else. If they had added a little extra attack, defense, health, or attack speed, they would have given players more agency to customize while being a thrill to find. Nothing special, even just a +1 or +2, but the disappointment in finding a cosmetic hat truly put a damper on adventuring like no game I’ve ever played and made backtracking feel like more of a chore than it should have. I’ve played considerably worse games that still managed to have drastically better, more useful finds. It was obnoxious after a while.

Plus, the lack of fast travel is a serious and perplexing exclusion, and biomes are connected in a way that makes returning to some areas time-consuming. The map is fairly useful, though it lacks a view of all connected regions, which can make planning routes a bit tricky. Beyond that, you can mark it with points of interest to return later.

Still, this is a short game, and movement upgrades and new weapons are perfectly spread out, so you are always feeling that joy of getting something new, and having a blast getting used to the latest toy, and just when you’re starting to feel comfortable with it, something new, including a quirky maneuver with machine guns!

In fact, the setup for the ultimate weapon was well done, referred to as the weapon that could move mountains. The lead-up to its obtainment, including the lengthy, challenging dungeon, was well-crafted.

My only annoyance was with the hookshot. The more I play, the more I believe this is one of the hardest devices to program for, and was, at times, during high-stakes platforming, a headache to use in Kunai, too. When the pressure was low, it was fine to use. Otherwise, movement is responsive and crisp, and while not on the level of Ori: Will of the Wisps, it had a certain flashiness. On the whole, platforming was smooth and without issue.

With that said, I had issues with the two-part boss at the end of that dungeon. The first part was simple enough, to the point where I did it perfectly after a while, but the second part was challenging due to poor design. The screen does not scroll up quickly enough, and not enough of the screen above you is shown, so you are left blindly flinging your hookshot around, hoping for the best, with an arsenal of instant-kill bullets right on your tail. Lose, and you are back to square one. Yay, redoing the first part I’ve done flawlessly to get another crack at part 2, even if it’s easy, it gets tedious. I’m of the mind that the developers should have made the first part longer and slightly harder, but made a checkpoint to start phase 2. Otherwise, bosses are easy, though pretty creative, and go down without much issue. The last boss was the second hardest and offered a solid challenge.

Sometimes, normal enemies served as more of a pain to get rid of, especially one late-game enemy rush. But I appreciated the varied strategies required to do so, as some required melee while others were better destroyed at long range. For a game of its length, the attack variety was admirable, and there was a satisfying weight to combat.

Save points are frequent enough that you’re rarely at risk of losing too much. However, the in-game modems, used to connect to the game’s fictional, in-game version of the “internet” for upgrading skills, were much less common. This was frustrating because upgrading your skills was only possible when connected. If every save point had a modem nearby, it would have been perfect, alas. I love skill trees and similar upgrade mechanics, but was disappointed in this game. Don’t get me wrong, all of the skills were useful, but it was so rudimentary, so basic.

What instantly drew me into Kunai was the limited color palette and monochrome tones with a subtle pastel-like aesthetic. It looks like drawings from a super-talented artist in high school (we all know at least one). Not just the standard type of beauty, but this clever uniqueness. From Kunai’s grimaces and smiles and facial expressions, to the various biomes and boss portraits and animations. In a gaming era flooded with stock pixel art and AAA 2.5 HD, this was a refreshing visual feast and enjoyable. The music was solid, futuristic-sounding, minimalistic, but somehow calming despite the high stakes presented by the plot, like a game you could veg out to if it wasn’t for all the ridiculous finds tucked away.

Despite its shortcomings, I had a good time with Kunai and would recommend it to Metroidvania fans. At around 10 hours, its length feels just right. While it may be too late for this game to become a hit, the developers have shown they have the tools and potential to create a bona fide success in the future with added polish, better quality of life features, and deeper customization.