If ever a game should sell like hotcakes based on aesthetics alone, then Finding Polka would be a global sensation. Every visual on every screen is a hand-drawn ballpoint pen illustration. When wandering the gaming world of Finding Polka, you’ll realise that almost every building, animal, and person is unique. The game is built up from over 300 A4-sized drawings and around 100 B4-sized drawings. It truly is a masterstroke of artistic brilliance.
The game itself is more straightforward and simplistic, on the surface anyway. Players control Friendy and her sausage dog Jazz. At the start of the game, they spot Polka, a spitting image of Jazz as a young pup. Intrigued, Friendy and Jazz decide to follow Polka, who ends up dognapped, kicking into action a game-long chase across increasingly crazy scenarios. Frendy and Jazz walk together through the ballpoint pen environments that flip between isometric and 2D perspectives, trying to reach Polka before the dog is inevitably moved somewhere else. My thoughts on Polka are mixed. I feel like Polka is as much the antagonist as the victim. Polka lives for the drama and chaos!
Each level is usually broken up into two types of gameplay. The main recurring theme of Finding Polka is observational fetchquesting and pathfinding. As the worlds are maze-like, you’ll need to work out how to get from A to B. This will involve triggering situational platforming animations or solving a few fetch quests or basic switch puzzles. Each level will have other characters dotted around, with thought bubbles telling you what item they need. A lot of these NPC quests are optional, and they rarely require tons of backtracking. Instead, the item they want is nearby, but perhaps slightly hidden in the noise of a bustling market, shop, or forest. Again, it’s all quite simple.
My main critique of this style of gameplay is that it’s both simple to do and easy to miss. There were a few times when I hadn’t walked close enough to something to trigger a thought bubble to know I could interact with a character or object. That left me stuck, pixel hunting for an exit. At least the interactive objects are all coloured in an off-yellow eggshell colour to make them stand out. I can see colourblind gamers having a little more difficulty.
The rest of Finding Polka is dedicated to short minigames or challenges. Whack-a-mole, sumo wrestling, and a vertical shoot em up and collectathon section are some of the more memorable moments. These crop up often, appear only once, and then never again. They are simplistic, and a fail state is impossible to reach. Some might require a score to be reached, but there is no time limit, so low-skilled players can still pass the challenge. I like the variety and the approach to ease of access for gamers, and they break up the walking-sim-esque main gameplay nicely. During a 2D section in space, some more precise platforming is required, but it is still incredibly easy and forgiving.
I enjoyed the journey of Finding Polka. Its story is a soft one, exploring loss in a slightly experimental way, using fantasy, aliens, and the supernatural to provide narrative beats. You can sit on benches and admire the artwork. You can enjoy some beautiful idle animations of Friendy and Jazz bonding, and collect real photos of the developer’s own pooch as bonuses. More importantly, players can bask in the vivid and imaginative world that solo dev Shinnosuke Kumazawa has drawn for us. It’s a love letter to the unbreakable bond of man and dog, and as a dog-lover myself, it warmed my heart.
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