"Lovers tree! Lovers tree! My son has successfully kissed for the first time!"

What is CHULIP about?

The game opens with a shot of Lovers Tree, a man living in a tree, asking the player to name the player character, and his love interest. They share a kiss, but then the poor boy wakes up from his dream. The poor boy and his old man just moved into a town called Long Life Town. The boy meets the girl of his dreams, but he isn't her type, and his dad plans to make him write a love letter, but once the boy writes his letter, an underground resident of Long Life Town steals it! The resident tells poor boy to write a better letter. Poor boy spends the rest of the game growing his heart to write a better letter, and improving his reputation among the neighbors of the town, gathering their kisses to make his heart strong. The puzzle of this game is figuring out how to get a kiss from each citizen, some people will only let you kiss them if you do a very specific thing, such as bathing the correct way.

Chulip as received criticism for it's extremely tricky puzzles, some requiring real life knowledge (such as a train puzzle, requiring you to know the routes of the Japanese train system). You have life points for attempting kisses, whenever someone rejects a kiss from you, you will be hit and lose life points. The more kisses you have, the higher health you will have, and you can try the harder kisses multiple times a day. Lovers tree will grant you more once you sleep. If you run out of hearts, you die and restart the day.

The gameplay is a bit difficult to explain, some people describe it as a puzzle game, some describe it as a kissing game, others consider it more of a life sim or detective game. When people go into the game, they expect to constantly be doing puzzles and getting kisses, but thats not how the game is actually supposed to be played! A lot of the game play is just talking to people, showing them items, and gathering information to get kisses. Theres only a few residents who you can kiss in the same strategy as the tutorial, and it's the underground residents. I recommend Backseat's video on Chulip, as it describes the games mechanics in a very easy to understand way, as well as providing criticism for what the game could do better

What do I love about CHULIP?

My favorite part of Chulip is the art direction. The characters are in the art style of puppets, they open their mouths up and down like a hand puppet. The characters talk in a banjo-kazooie type way, and their voices tell a lot about their personalities. Each and every character is memorable, they're all unique and have amazing designs. My personal favorite designs are Yodzilla, Poor Boy, Puzzle, Zombie Mika, Leo, and Dr. Dandy [See Below].

The scenery of the game is also very beautiful. There are multiple places to go, including Long Life Town, Scarecrow Field, Funny Bone City, and Worldly desire temple. I would love to live in Long Life Town, maybe it's just my desire for a walkable city idk. It's so cozy and everybody knows each other, I love that kind of community. What really brings the game together is the sound design. The soundtrack is banger after banger, the theme of Long Life Town has little quirky sounds, such as a kazoo, and it truly captures the vibes of the town. A small, weird little happy town. The sound effects are super cute and silly, my favorite sound is the sound when Poor boy falls down, it makes it sound like he's made of a squishy material.