Puppet Zoo Pilomy (Playstation)

 This is an interesting case (even if it's not much of an interesting game): though it's a Japan-only release, that release does contain a full English translation, and it's a game where language would be a barrier to playing, if there was actually any kind of progression in front of which for a barrier to be placed. You'd think the novelty of being a Japan-nly game with a full translation would be enough to at least get it some attention in the west, but I'd never even heard of it until someone mentioned it on a forum a month or two ago.

 

There's a pretty obvious reason why no-one would have bothered to investigate it, though, especially back in times of old when one would have been expected to pay money to take a risk on an import game. The fact is that, as you can see from the screenshots, it looks like an educational TV show for pre-school children. But those appearances are deceptive, as I don't think anyone of any age could learn anything from this game.

 

You play as a child-like thing with a yellow blob sidekick (supposedly, the yellow blob is the eponymous Pilomy), and you go to a scientist's lab to get "puppet" parts, then to an assembly factory to put the parts togetherinto complete puppets. "Puppets" in this case refers to low-poly semi-realistic animals, and you can mix and match the parts to create weird chimerae if you want. Certain head-types can even be used as tails, to create amphisbaena-esque monsters. Then you go home, look at your mirror to put your creations into a world, and then ride your spaceship thing into the mirror to go and look at them in the world.

 

While you're in the world, you can feed the creatures, and giving them food that they like gives you more hearts, which are the currency used to get more pupper parts from the scientist's vending machine. But the thing is: there doesn't seem to be any way to leave the world and go home, so you don't get to use these hearts? There's other ways of getting them, like just walking around the town where most of the game takes place and being nice to the people you talk to. 

 

The biggest problem Puppet Zoo Pilomy has is that I've already described the entire game. That is: there isn't any actual game in here! You just make your weird animals and then you go and look at them, and that's it. You aren't tasked with making a weird zoo that draws visitors, or pitting your creations against other creatures or anything like that. After you've done that for about ten minutes, the only remaining point of interest is something that isn't translated, or in fact, even in the actual game: as you save the game more times, the name of the save in the Playstation's memory card management screen gradually tells a little story of Pilomy suffering a dark fate. Of course, I didn't find this out myself, there's a little article about it here. In summary, though: don't bother with this.