Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
Kahoots was originally a flash game for the PC that starred a little blue Kahoot whose only goal in life is to traverse strange levels and find the exits. The Kahoot moves back and forth on his own, and he will never walk off the edge of a ledge or really do anything of his own volition other than walk back and forth. It's the player's job to steer him toward the exit by swapping the blocks he walks on. Some of the blocks are trap doors (which allow the Kahoot to drop down) or jumping blocks (which bounce him up and over) and some are spikes (which will kill the Kahoot on contact). For an extra bonus, players can try to send the Kahoot on a brief detour to collect all the yummy cupcakes floating around.

Perhaps the trailer below can better explain the gameplay…



What's Hot
The idea behind Kahoots may not be that original, but its execution is excellent. The gameplay controls are simple and easy to remember, and best of all, the game does work with you whether you are a quick or methodical player. You can pause the game at any time to get a quick layout of the land, and fortunately whenever you swap the blocks, the game is paused as well so you can make those last minute swaps with little difficulty. The Kahoot does not have a set number of lives, so you can take as many tries as you need to solve the level.

But if you hate the level or want to come back to it later, you can simply skip it. Players start with a map at the beginning of the game, and from there they can select any level they want to play. However, it is advised that you don't go too far ahead, because there are brief tutorials, or rather explanations, given by the odd Pugbeast in the levels that introduce a new concept, such as the cannons and cardborgs. You wouldn't want to be caught by a cardborg unaware of the doom he brings.


Beware the cardborg!

What's Not
This section is going to be rather short because I can only find three things wrong with it. One, this puzzler may cause annoyance and frustration. Two, the graphics are quite cute-cutesy, almost a little too much for my taste. And three, its price of $4.49 nears the higher end of the PSP Mini price range. However, this is still quite a reasonable price when compared to other PSP Minis, especially other PSP Minis that are ports, as this one is.

Final Word
Once you ignore the graphics (I'm especially looking at you boys), you will quickly see that everything else about this game is great. There are fifty levels of navigational puzzle fun and it even has a high replayability factor for those obsessive players who like to find everything (like the cakes) and kill everything (like the cardborgs).

In short, there is no reason for any action-puzzle fan with a PSP to not download this game. I personally do not care for these types of games, but I could not put it down for hours after download. For anyone who knows my attention span and frustration level, that's saying quite a bit.