Puppeteer Turns Its Stage Into a Trap, and the Audience Into the Mark

Puppeteer opens with a boy losing his head. That is not a figure of speech. The Moon Bear King tears off Kutaro’s wooden head and devours it, then casts away the body. What is left is a puppet with no face and a pair of magical scissors called Calibrus.

A Boy, a Bear, and Castle Grizzlestein

Puppeteer is a 2013 platform game developed by Japan Studio and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3. It is a side-scrolling platformer built as a puppeteer’s theatre, with sets, lights, music and a narrator framing the action. The premise is dark and the staging is dark with it: Kutaro is one of many children whose souls were taken from Earth in their sleep and turned into wooden puppets to serve the King in his mobile fortress, Castle Grizzlestein.

The story runs across a concave world representing the Moon, split between its dark side and its Earthward side. The Moon Goddess was overthrown by her subordinate, Little Bear, who seized her Black Moonstone and Calibrus and named himself Moon Bear King. His twelve generals, the animals of the Chinese zodiac, each hold a piece of the Goddess’ White Moonstone and each has thrown part of the moon-world into disorder.

Swappable Heads and the Cost of Losing One

The head mechanic is the game’s best idea. Kutaro can hold three heads at a time, and each one grants certain animations and interacts with nearby scenery. Damage costs him his head. If the player does not retrieve it within a few seconds, it disappears. Lose all three and the run restarts from the last checkpoint. Collecting 100 Moonsparkles in a section earns an extra life.

Bullets, in the order the game hands them over:

• Calibrus, the magical scissors, cuts through scenery and opens otherwise unreachable areas.
• The Knight’s shield defends against damage and reflects attacks.
• The Ninja’s bombs attack enemies and break obstacles.
• The Pirate’s hook grapples and pulls enemies and changes the scenery.
• The Wrestler’s mask and strength body slams enemies and pushes or pulls obstacles.

Those Four Champions of the Moon arrive later, and they widen a moveset that starts narrow. Two players can share the game. The second controls Kutaro’s companion — first the ghostly cat Ying-Yang, later the fairylike Pikarina — who examines the scenery for interactables, Moonsparkles and new heads.

Ezma Potts and the Scissors That Won’t Let Go

The Moon Witch Ezma Potts is the best thing in Puppeteer. She finds Kutaro in the dungeons, sets him on the throne room to steal Calibrus, and is secretly planning to overthrow the Moon Bear King herself. When she demands the scissors back, they adhere to Kutaro instead. She lets him keep them and sends him against the twelve generals anyway. That is a real character, not a quest-giver.

The campaign moves through the Moonwood Forest, guarded by Rat and Snake, and the Moonshine Sea, patrolled by others of the twelve. Kutaro’s object never changes: gather the Moonstone shards, strip the generals’ influence from the scenery, free the souls of children like himself, and save a Goddess in distress. Along the way he rescues Pikarina, Princess of the Sun, from the King.

The Verdict on Puppeteer

Puppeteer’s theatrical framing is the reason to play it, and its head-swapping is the reason it holds up. The game understands that losing a head should mean something, so it makes the head a resource you spend, retrieve and mourn in a few seconds. The Four Champions add range, but the scissors and the heads do the real work.

The weaknesses are structural. Twelve generals is a long roll call, and the middle of the story leans on defeating them in turn. The companion role is thinner than the lead, which matters less in single player and more when a second person is holding the controller.

What Puppeteer gets right is tone. It is a dark fairytale staged as a puppet show, and it never apologizes for the cruelty of its opening. A boy decapitated in the first act, a witch with her own plans, a bear wearing a crown he stole — that is a confident game, and it earns the confidence.

game review · Japan Studio · Platformer · PlayStation 3 · PS3 · Puppeteer