The original Toki Tori released 12 years ago for Game Boy Color and remade for Wii in 2008 had you navigating complex levels with the help of a set number of tools to rescue Toki Tori’s unhatched siblings. It was a challenging and charming game that went unnoticed with its original release, but found an audience with the Wii remake and subsequent versions for other platforms.

Despite being only the second entry in the series, Two Tribes decided to drastically change things with Toki Tori 2. The items are gone and are replaced by two simple actions: chirping and pounding the ground. Other than walking and climbing ladders, these are the only actions available to the player; there’s no attacking, no jumping, no rolling and there’s definitely no hiding behind cover. Understandably, the initial reaction to such a cute and colourful game with only two actions might be that this will be baby's first puzzle game. This couldn’t be more wrong.

For starters, there is no text besides the title, only an image right at the beginning of the game showing what the A and B buttons do. No one explains what to do, what are the consequences to your actions and where you need to go, it’s completely up to you to explore and experiment to figure out how everything works. As soon as the first obstacle appears there are only two options you can take, so you have no choice but to try them and that way you learn that when you pound the ground next to the crab that lives inside a rock, he runs from you and when you whistle he comes closer.

Then you learn that frogs swell up when they eat certain creatures and that by pounding the ground they release a bubble than envelops you and makes you float in the air for a while until it pops. As you learn these and other simple concepts as well as the animals’ behaviours, things gradually stack up and puzzles start requiring these intricate, well thought out solutions that will completely wreck your brain, but leave you with a stupid grin on your face once you figure it out.

There are times where a little guidance would be welcome though, as you start progressing, you’re not entirely sure what you’re doing, where you’re going or exactly what’s happening, especially as you light up warp stones and progress on the map, but you just keep soldiering on and making progress despite all the questions. Eventually the game will open up to you and abandon linear progress, you’ll have to go back and discover different exits and paths to unlock new areas which can get pretty confusing at times. Not only confusing, but boring and repetitive as it will force you to redo some puzzles that can be pretty slow as you figure out where to go next.

There’s more to the tweeting than just calling animals to you though, you will also learn simple tunes that will give you some abilities that don’t directly interfere with the actual puzzle solving like a tune that will let you restart at the previous checkpoint (useful since the game requires a lot of trial and error) or the ability to teleport between checkpoints. Exclusive to the Wii U version is the song that lets you use the gamepad to take photos of the game’s roster of creatures and other notable things, these photos will go to a gallery that once completed unlocks a secret. Two Tribes says a level editor is on the way, but it hasn’t been released in time for this review.

There isn’t any ground breaking use of the Gamepad, but having the tunes on the smaller screen at all times is very useful and as always the option to play off-TV is very welcome, with just a press of the – button, the game is switched to the Gamepad and the game is right there in your hands looking just as cute and colourful as on the TV. Not exactly a Gamepad feature, but Miiverse is also a good thing here as it’s a great place to get help when you’re stuck.

Toki Tori is deceptive in its simplicity, the graphics are pretty, cheerful and colourful, overloaded with cuteness, the music is light and low-key, the text inexistent, the controls uncluttered and you can only do two things. But the ways you can interact with the world make for very intricate and very hard puzzles. If you like your puzzle games slow and challenging, maybe even overwhelming at times, Toki Tori 2 might just be your thing.