KAMI Review

Immerse yourself and become one with paper as this visually attractive game will bring out your inner Zen.

The art of paper folding or origami as it is known has always been something that I enjoyed doing in my spare time ever since I was young. So finding out that Kami is a game revolving around origami definitely caught my attention. Once I loaded up the game, I was greeted with the word Kami on my top screen and two grey circles and a big blue circle on my bottom screen.

Tapping the top circle with the ‘i’ will bring you to the settings screen and also the game information. You are able to change your sound settings here and to return back to the main menu, just tap the black Kami icon. The bottom grey circle is your completion progress, so the more puzzles you complete the higher the percentage will be. This circle is not interactive unfortunately. And finally you have the main event of the game, the puzzles! I’m sure anyone can figure that out as it says ‘Classic Puzzles’ in the centre.

In all honesty, I did not have a clue what I was supposed to do in this game as there were no instructions in the settings and also no controls when I select my puzzle. After tapping a few times and watching the pretty colours change from pink to black, I finally figured out what was going on. The aim of this game is to change the whole piece of paper to only one solid colour and at the bottom of the touch screen there are helpful buttons to help you.

Starting from the left there is an icon with a house, this means you will return back to the puzzle selection page if you fancy a break. Next is the icon of a circle arrow, this means the puzzle will return back to the beginning so you have a nice clean sheet. The arrow icon next to the restart is the undo button, this will go back one step in case you did the wrong move before. For each puzzle there is a move count at the bottom and inside the little yellow circle is a number, this number is the amount of moves which can be done to achieve a perfect. If you use one more move then you will achieve an ‘OK’ for your efforts, but remember, any more moves than that and you will fail the puzzle and you will have to start again.

Now we have reached the part which will help you in completing the puzzles, the colours! Depending on how many colours are involved, the colours will differ each time. By selecting a colour you can change different sections of paper to that specific colour, but even the tiniest colour square you change will count as one of your moves. There are nine puzzles in each of the lettered sections A to E and the difficulty gets harder the further you progress. I have gotten up to section D and have been stuck for a few days as the puzzles have gotten a lot more challenging, but I know it can be done! Never give up like the saying goes.

So that’s the game play, next is the music and I really enjoy the music. It’s relaxing and as the game is based on origami, it has a very oriental vibe. There is no singing, just instrumental and I feel that this choice in game music really helps you to think as you tackle the challenging puzzles. Also, there is a nice bit of music when you complete a puzzle and depending on whether you get a perfect or an OK, the music differs.

The graphics for the game is very nice, especially when you change the colours as it’s mesmerising to watch. The controls are very simple to grasp as well as it is 100% touch screen so no D-Pad or buttons are needed.

The game is quite short because once (or if) you complete the puzzles then the game is finished, unless you want to be a perfectionist and achieve perfect on all the puzzles. Other than that, I did enjoy playing the game even though it did annoy me at times when I keep failing at the hard puzzles, but if you want to get your hands on this puzzle game it is available on the Nintendo e-shop now.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Nintendo 3DS code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.