Kukoos: Lost Pets is a new 3D platformer aimed toward a younger audience with its visual style, simple story, and cute characters, but quickly falters due to technical issues and bugs. Even the addition of pets that are both invaluable and necessary to the game's mechanics can’t help it overcome these woes, despite developer PetitFabrik and publisher Modus Games creating a gorgeous place for players to explore.

Kukoos: Lost Pets begins with an introduction to the Kukoos, creatures that resemble square-shaped primates that can wear clothes. It is the Kukoos' ‘Pet Day’, a celebration and competition of pets with the goal of finding the most amazing pet on their island. Not surprisingly, the celebration quickly goes awry, and the Kukoos' pets become brainwashed by their new collars and become hostile to their owners. Players are tasked with traveling through a variety of locations to save the pets by knocking off and destroying the collars to restore the pets to their natural state. Each pet has an ability that helps or is required to traverse each area, such as a Light-bug that illuminates caves or a block-like creature that expands into a climbable platform for reaching higher-up places. The game is designed around them only being helpful in the specific levels you find them in, but it is unfortunate players don't have access to more than one at a time.

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The story is simple and unproblematic, and while uncomplicated stories aren’t necessarily bad, it lacks a hook to draw users into the game world. There are no backstories to any characters, nor is there anything about the land the Kukoos inhabit other than a lonely island on a water-filled world. As Kukoos: Lost Pets is skewed towards a younger demographic, its storytelling methods make sense, and it stays easy to follow. Character designs are simple as well, with the Kukoos dressed in various clothing styles that add a certain amount of charm to each one. None will set the world afire with their fashion choices, but they play well within the game's aesthetic and style.

Kukoos Lost Pets visuals are very entertaining in motion; the game uses well-designed objects along with bright colors throughout its level designs. The various climbable platforms are luminous, and the pet designs are colorful and imaginative while not being too cutesy or overbearing. Bright neon colors shine in the game's darker places, and most areas are pretty to look at and run on, jump in, and travel around. Character and pet animations are smooth when in motion and feel lively while running or pacing through the various areas. Boss designs are a bit basic when compared to other recent platformers, but they fit well in Kukoos: Lost Pets.

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The multiplayer is where the game shines and choosing to have 4-player local co-op adds to the enjoyment of the game immensely. There is always fun to be found in helping or hindering fellow players, and with all the collectibles being shared, there is little reason to impede fellow players except for the intentional (or unintentional) trolling that comes with multiple players navigating platforms. It feels almost like a party game at certain points and is undoubtedly more fun with as many players as possible jumping around.

Unfortunately, the technical issues with Kukoos: Lost Pets start within the first few minutes of beginning a new game. The introduction movie stutters and the framerate slows down at multiple points while introducing players to the first level. These are even more noticeable when trying to play through the tutorial, as the tutorial windows that pop up cause the game to freeze for what seems like a quarter of a second every time they appear. There also seem to be points where the audio desyncs, as well as moments throughout the game where all audio drops out entirely for a few seconds.

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As well as dealing with those technical issues, Kukoos: Lost Pets is riddled with bugs and even a few places where players can cause bosses to become completely unresponsive and require users to restart the fight. There are even locations where players can skip entire cut-scenes simply by avoiding the triggers for them. While these aren’t game-breaking issues, they happen enough to be annoying and are entirely too easy to reproduce. In a game with a definitively younger audience, it may be less noticeable to them at first until the boss just stops and stares at them.

A final frustration was the tutorials not giving clear instructions. For example, the first pets players get to use in the tutorial are a pair of single-winged creatures that can help you fly. The tutorial box instructs the user to repeatedly hit the A button but neglects to inform the player that they need to hit R to put the pets on their shoulders first in order to be able to start flying, and then be able to hit A to go upwards. It can be a frustrating experience having to press buttons until accidentally figuring out what needs to be done.

Kukoos: Lost Pets has personality, some funny dialogue, and looks gorgeous, but can’t seem to find its footing as a new platformer with its myriad of issues. Its intended audience will enjoy how pretty it is and will definitely enjoy using the Kukoos’ pets to traverse the various areas, but the game's technical issues will chase everyone else away. Fighting through the crowded 3D platformer category, its graphics and local multiplayer will only be able to carry it so far, which is unfortunate since the Kukoos could be a breath of fresh air in a genre that can always use new faces.

Kukoos: Lost Pets is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox S. Game Rant was provided a Switch code for this review.