Kodo Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

A crazy game with up to 26 simultaneous players on the same handset.

Kodo is a puzzle game where one button (any button) controls all the action.

Let me just get this multiplayer madness out of the way. You can have 26 people crowded around the handset all frantically pressing their respective buttons. Is this game designed for people with needles for fingers? Can you plug a keyboard into your phone and use these keys instead? So many questions but does anyone care? Kodo is a cool 1 player game and a fun 2-player/3-player game but who would actually invite two dozen friends to play. This probably sounded great on paper and the marketing guys were probably rubbing their hands in glee. Although I guess if it was 26 Bluetooth/WiFi players I would praising it no end.

The 1-player 'practice' game as it's called is worth the money alone. There are 18 levels to unlock and the game is a bit of a tricky one. The idea is to move your character towards the goal and avoid traps and enemies along the way.

Kodo is all about the control system and it's this system that allows such multiplayer mayhem. To move Kodo, all you need to do is press a button (any button). The direction is shown on screen by a rotating arrow emanating from Kodo. Some good timing and rhythm is required to move Kodo where and when you want him to go. There are a few enemies and traps waiting for you but as I said the game is all about timing. Everything moves and responds in a set pattern. Figuring out the pattern is half the battle. Once you know what to do, the trick is concentrating long enough to do it and not get entranced by the on-screen metronomic changes. The later levels do get kinda challenging. I would recommend this game to any budding musician as the game is all about following a beat and rhythm.

Seeing a bunch of giggly grown men huddled round a mobile usually means only one thing. In this case we were actually playing the multiplayer option not watching video clips. Each player assigns themselves a button and you each move whenever you want and try to kill the other kodos. If you have lots of players, the screen is filled up with red arrows and concentration skills are again highly required. We managed to get by on our Nokia 6600, even with our fat fingers but some steady handset control is needed. Maybe they should bring out a stand for it as well.

The term 'massively multiplayer' is usually reserved for games of 100 users or more but I think having 10 people squeezing around a handset counts as massively multiplayer as well. Massively enjoyable? Depends if you like pocket Twister and have a finger fetish.