Natsume
had an interesting game to show at this year’s E3 called Chulip. Derived from
the Japanese word “Chu,” the sound effect of kissing, and lip, like the ones on
your face. Chulip begins with a kid and his father moving to a new town. They
aren’t very well off in terms of money, so they are outcasts in this new town.
One night the boy dreams of kissing a girl under a local tree, and later that
day he sees that girl in town. Upon asking her out she immediately turns him
down, telling him he isn’t popular enough.
Everyone in this town is unhappy. In fact some look very angry, and your job is
to go around kissing everyone to cheer them up. This will increase your
reputation, which will lead to making your dream come true. So the point of the
game is to kiss all the unhappy people in town so that you can eventually kiss
the girl you really like.
A lot
of your targets in the beginning are easy. All you have to do is wait for the
steam shooting from their head to turn to music notes and you kiss them. If you
kiss them at the wrong time they won’t like it and they’ll hit you. Later on
people are harder and harder to kiss, and you’ll have to figure out the best
ways to go about doing it.
Chulip
is a very obscure title, and Natsume realizes that only the truly hardcore
gamers that know about it will buy it. So to help open it up to a wider
audience, they are planning on releasing in a $9.99-$19.99 price range. Chulip
is a lot of fun, the graphics are cute and cartoony, and there is a lot of humor
interlaced throughout the game. Keep your eye out for this one third quarter of
this year.
