ilomilo Game Review XBOX Live Arcade

The first thing you will notice about ilomilo is that it is possibly one of the most adorable and cute games ever to hit the XBOX Live Arcade. The bizarre, yet extremely beautiful patchwork world of ilomilo is reminiscent of games like LittleBigPlanet, but manages to retain it's own unique feel and art direction. The two little stars of the game are ilo and milo, adorable little plush creatures who want nothing more than to be reunited. These two delightfully cute little guys always seem to end up stranded apart from each other and it's your job to reunite them, solving the puzzles and using the strange gameplay mechanics to successfully reach this goal. This is a wonderful little game full of charm and fun.

As i previously mentioned, the goal here in each level is very simple, reunite ilo and milo. The characters will begin at opposite ends of the cubic maze and you can switch back and forth between the two, controlling one at a time. The game begins cheerfully with it's cute adorable charm, but soon begins to get extremely difficult. You can manoeuvre various types of blocks around the environment and they will create new paths and ways to reunite you with your missing friend. Special carpets can be used to walk over the edges of cubes, changing the direction of the cubic maze, and the maze itself is filled with pesky critters who want nothing more than to get in your way. The key here is planning ahead, to solve these challenging puzzles you will need to visualize your next move three steps ahead, to work out how to get where you need to be.

Not only do the eye-catching visuals look great, but the game mechanics add to this as well. Walking on those magic carpets will spin the entire world around, making ceilings and walls into floors, one special block that can be carried, will gobble up ilo or milo and spit them out on the opposite side, flipping the entire level upside down. This storybook world is constantly in motion, adding to the difficulty and challenges you will face in the later levels.

There are other goals to achieve in ilomilo other than reuniting the two lost souls, in each level there are three animals to collect called Safkas. When you collect all three in a level you will unlock bonus puzzles. There are also polaroid photos to pick up and records to collect which can all be enjoyed at the Gallery on the main menu. As levels become harder players might end up focusing on just reuniting ilo and milo, forgetting about all the extra goodies available. This will mean that players will have more incentive to go back and play again to reach a 100% completion state. Another unique little hidden gem, is an unlockable NES-style 8-bit mini-game, although the gameplay is not as engrossing as it's visuals.

ilomilo can also be played cooperatively with a friend, however, there is sadly no XBOX Live support which is disappointing. It was also disappointing to see that the co-op sections are exactly the same as the single player experience. Players take turns solving the same single player puzzles, which is fun, but it would have been nice to see some exclusive levels dedicated to the co-op sections.

Overall ilomilo is a great little title to hit the XBOX Live Arcade. It's cute, adorable, charming, and down right gorgeous. It has plenty of challenges that will test even veteran puzzle gamers and the delightful music and characters make this one of the best puzzle experiences on XBLA. It is sad to see a lack of effort put into co-op because the potential here is enormous, but hopefully this just means we will see more in the future.

ilomilo is a great way to start 2011 8.5/10