Kalanoro (Multi) Review

A game I previously previewed on SPC, Kalanoro sees a full release today on PC, Switch, Xbox Series consoles, and the platform I'm reviewing this game on, the PlayStation 5. Let's take a trip to Lemuria and experience some Malagasy folklore and culture in the process, shall we?

Doubles as an enjoyable game and a lovely primer in Malagasy culture

Kalanoro stars Kalakely, one of the hairy, eponymous creatures of Malagasy folklore, in a musical adventure. To follow an ancient prophecy, Kalakely needs to cancel the concert plans of the sinister witch named Raneny, who has taken over Lemuria. How to do this? By jumping into a tour bus, rescuing a bunch of lemur musicians, creating a band, and singing and playing their way to Raneny, of course! It's a simple enough story that is imbued and strengthened by not only an immense amount of cute charm, but also because it represents so much of Madagascar, its culture, and folklore--a part of the world that decidedly doesn't get much in the way of representation in gaming. Therefore it was incredibly cool to be enlightened and introduced to this part of the world in such a wonderful way. 

If Kalanoro was a Malagasy dish, like the ones Kalakely prepares on the tour bus for her bandmates, then the ingredients would be one part 3D platformer, one part band management, and one part rhythm game. The 3D platforming is the main ingredient, of course, and this takes place in various levels, generally giving the player a quasi-overhead perspective of the action. 

Kalakely's ready for adventure and to assemble her ensemble of lemur musicians!

Kalanoro's levels feature plenty of platforming and especially dangers to concern herself with, whether that be disappearing platforms to leap off from, rolling spike hazards to avoid, boxes that dip into poisonous water when Kalakely's weight is distributed on them, spike traps that mount upon Kalakely passing over them, and more. 

Fortunately, Kalakely the Kalanoro has several moves to not just get around levels, but also to contend with various enemies that get in her way. Between jumps and double jumps, as well as air dashes that allow her to pass through certain gates, Kalakely is well equipped to platform her way through levels. 

Perhaps the piece de resistance for Kalakely is that of her hair. Throughout the game she can get shampoo that strengthens her massive mane to perform various different abilities. She can grab onto enemies and pull herself towards them for a charge attack, and conversely, attach her hair to switches and levers to pull them to open doors and such. Later, she can use her lovely locks to latch onto enemies and shock them. This hair ability can also siphon and transfer electricity from generators to open up locked doors. Finally, Kalakely earns the ability to throw a clump of hair at enemies to blind and confuse them, having them go berserk in their anger and start attacking their friends. This mass of hair can also block pipes spewing toxic gas as well as cover the gaze of security cameras.

Keep your rear in gear and avoid those spears, Kalakely!

When you're not running, jumping, and air dashing through levels, you'll be pitted against numerous enemies. This usually happens in cordoned off zones that are essentially rooms where you face and fight off a mob of enemies using kicks, punches, Kalakely's various hair techniques (each has a cooldown, by the way), and also weapons that can be picked up from the ground. These weapons come in the form of hammers, signposts, shoes, carrots, among other objects, and each has their own amount of hits they can give to enemies before they break. 

This enemy saw the sign, and while it didn't open up their eyes, it did totally knock them out.

Unfortunately, combat is not really a strong suit for Kalanoro. Between the camera being too far zoomed out to always be able to clearly see the arena you're fighting in--meaning it's way too easy to take unintended hits, especially from ranged weapons and shots--and just the clunky feel of combat in general, I sort of got to a point near the end of the game where I groaned each and every time I encountered a room like this. Since it happens basically three times a level, yeah, it got old quick. 

While discovering combat rooms isn't too joyful, what instead is are the vast amounts of goodies thata are generally cleverly hidden within Kalanoro's dozens of levels. The main collectible is that of blue gems, used as the currency in Lemuria and for Kalakely to purchase the previously mentioned shampoo, as well as upgrades to her tour bus and other goodies from various vendors across the Lemuria world map. There are also lost Lemur children to rescue, paintings of Renany to cover up with posters of Kalakely's band, cassette tapes which unlock new songs from actual Malagasy artists to play on the tour bus, and scrolls which reveal interesting iotas of information regarding Malagasy folklore. Each level optionally has a set amount of collectibles to fully nab, and doing so will give you a 100% notification at the end of a given level for doing so.

When you're not running and roaming through levels, you'll spend the rest of your time moving from location to location, level to level, via your traveling tour bus. Here, you can craft posters and numerous Malagasy dishes from materials found throughout Kalakey's adventures. The dishes are to satisfy the bandmates Kalakely rescues along her journey. Basically, when a given band member has a specific dish over the head in a thought bubble, that's Kalakely's cue to cook something up for them using gathered food materials through a super simplistic crafting mini-game. Fail to do this after a-decidedly-generous-while and the bandmate has the potential to run off and get abducted by Ranany's troops again. Therefore, you'll have to go back to the original level you rescued them and do so once more.

Kalakely's transport to levels, gigs, and more, one could say it's a "bus"tling hub.

Thus, what this amounts to is needless babysitting to satisfy your bandmates, and it happens so much where they yearn for something to eat--pretty much every two levels completed. It becomes incredibly tedious, and I can't help but wonder if there would have been a better way to incorporate crafting real-world Malagasy dishes to enhance the gameplay flavor instead of detracting from the game's menu of features instead. 

Perhaps instead of using fear of punishment to force players to feed Kalakely's bandmates, Kalanoro could have instead given players positive reinforcement techniques to do so. For instance, building their friendships through giving them dishes they like, which in turn could reward given goodies at different points in their friendships. Just spitballing and brainstorming, because as is, having to feed Kalakely's bandmates is an imposition at best and obnoxious as all get out at worst when all I wanted to do was enjoy the other aspects of the game.

Kalanoro has a pretty typical loop to it in what you need to do. Each time you enter a new region of the world map, of which there are three total, you're tasked with entering the level to rescue a band member (i.e. playing through a normal level from point A to point B). From there, the next level after is all about finding their instrument of choice at that level's end. The next step is printing off posters (from wood found in levels) and spreading the word of Kalakely and band's upcoming concert. This is done by plastering said posters over Raneny's smug face-ridden portraits in one of two to three levels that then open up. Finally, the actual concert performance happens, and then the process of finding a new bandmate anew once again. This process happens twice per region with a boss level following it.

The concert performances themselves start off with Kalakely and a bandmate performing in front of a sparse smattering of Lemurians. As your band gains fame and fans from doing different actions throughout the adventure (putting up posters, defending boom boxes from enemy attacks in special level areas, and rescuing Baby Lemurians, for example), the audience and venues for the concerts expand as the game goes on. The performances themselves are incredibly basic rhythm mini-games. You press a button when the gauge around the circle reaches the blue part and occasionally aim at Raneny's troops who try to mess up the performance behind the stage. 

The music in Kalanoro is some marvelous Malagasy-style magic.

As for the boss battles, these are engaging fights that offer a decent amount of challenge. Perhaps quite a bit more than the standard levels seen otherwise in the game. They're all about waiting for an opportunity for the boss to become vulnerable (sometimes too much of a wait) and then pummeling them senseless while they are in that state. Fortunately, even with some of the fights being a bit taxing, the game does well in bestowing you with hearts to replenish your health, so you seldom have to worry about playing perfectly.

Kalanoro's first boss certainly knows how to make waves.

If Kalakely does lose all of her health in a level, whether from falling into pits too many times, or taking a lot of damage from enemies or hazards, you have the option of either restarting the level from the beginning or opting to use some blue gems to revive her instantly on the spot. Curiously, there is a finite amount of gems in Kalanoro to collect throughout the game. Ones you've collected previously show up a translucent in appearance and don't count towards your overall total when grabbed again. This means, theoretically, you could spend all of your gems and be left without a way to revive yourself or buy items from various vendors. Sure, by the end of Kalanoro I was swimming in over 2,000 gems, but it makes me interested to see if it is indeed possible to run out of gems completely and what would happen then. 

While I did overall enjoy Kalanoro, there were other aspects that took me out of my element of enjoyment with it. For one, occasional glitches where I could easily reach certain areas of levels, but the game did not necessarily like me doing that, resulting in Kalakely getting stuck with no alternative but to restart the level. Further, some of the parts where the game switches between 3D and a 2D perspective didn't always function the greatest. Kalakely could sometimes get placed or locked on the wrong plane in the transition between a 3D and 2D section, causing some frustrations in the control and platforming accuracy departments. 

Kalanoro isn't a lengthy game either way. I beat it within a weekend, and it took about six hours to 100%, collecting everything in levels and completing all of the side quests. Honestly, it's a fair amount of time for this type of game. It doesn't outwear its welcome length-wise, even if the constant demand to cook dishes for bandmates did. 

Glitches, poor combat, and some unfortunate, disappointing design decisions aside, Kalanoro is an above average platformer that I'm glad I was able to play. My introduction to Malagasy culture and folklore was a massive bonus as well in playing this game. With a ton of lovely charm, good vibes, and some decent, but not great level design, Kalanoro might not necessarily be a must-play for platforming fans, but it certainly made this reviewer pleased to play it.

[SPC Says: C+] 

A code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review. 

This game was played via the PlayStation 5 version. Kalanoro is also available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series consoles, and PC.