LocoRoco Midnight Carnival Hands-On

Made specifically for the PSP Go, LocoRoco Midnight Carnival is the third entry in this quirky and adorable series. The game is not considered a full-fledged sequel, but it does bring all your favorite crazy LocoRoco back and let you play through 16 wacky levels. Midnight Carnival also does a few things that we've never seen before in a LocoRoco game. There were only two levels available to play at Sony's PSP Go event in San Francisco, but we were happy to play them and can't wait until the full game comes out.

Who's Making This Game: Japan Studio, a branch of Sony Computer Entertainment, is once again responsible for bringing us another charming little platformer. The game will be published by Sony Computer Entertainment of America.

What The Game Looks Like: Midnight Carnival is a bit darker than the previous games in some ways, because the goal of the game is to beat the bizarre challenge that the Bui Buis have set. Visually, the game looks very similar to the last two games, but with each game, there's a bit more detail added to the background. It's still the same 2D colorful world, but there's more stuff going on this time.

What Is There To Do: The story here is that the Bui Buis have challenged the LocoRoco to go through their midnight carnival. If the LocoRoco can do so, they can go back to sleep. Once again, your LocoRoco is grabbing picories and berries as it happily rolls and bounces its way to the end of the stage. There will be a couple of minigames, including the crane game and a pachinko-like game. We weren't able to play them, but we did get a chance to check out the Bui Bui store, where you can purchase accessories with the picories you've collected to dress up your LocoRoco.

We were also told that this is the first time that LocoRoco will feature multiplayer modes. You can unlock cooperative and competitive modes to play with up to four players ad hoc. There will be global leaderboards, and if you make it to the top five, your replay can be saved so that other players can watch and envy your LocoRoco skills.

How The Game Is Played: The controls still work the same as in the previous games: you use the L and R buttons to tilt the world and press them together to jump. Midnight Carnival has added a "Boing!" feature, which means that you can now chain your jumps, which gives you more points and more bounciness as you go through the levels. The levels are now designed in such a way that you have to manage where you want to go to collect the most picories and berries while keeping your chain alive.

What They Say: LocoRoco Midnight Carnival is the next iteration of LocoRoco on the PSP. While it's not a formal sequel, it's a great offshoot that was made for the PSP Go and also the core LocoRoco fan.

What We Say: The new chain jumping feature adds a layer of strategy to the game by making you plot out the route you want to take beforehand. Midnight Carnival is more of what we love about the series, and we're excited to see how the cooperative and competitive multiplayer modes will work. The ability to record and share your gameplay is also a nice addition, but let's face it, the best feature by far is being able to make your LocoRoco don a top hat. LocoRoco Midnight Carnival will be available for download on November 1 for 14.99.