"Yeah, I've been in love. Yeah, I've been in love... I've been in love, I mean.. that's what... yeah."
- The Hulk


This is one of these 10/10s where like, speaking as a game entirely, dunno if I'd give it a 10 but objectivity is for posers. I loved this shit for all its quirks and all, kind of like the rough headed dumbo boy at the core of this game. Game's got heart like our boy on his love quest as he grows into a young man from helping out the people in his town to prove he's a suitable boy for the girl of his dreams.

Real shit tho I would've gotten turbo filtered if I didn't fuckin use a guide so, shouts out GameFAQS.

Being young's about a lot of things y'know? Love being one of em, finding your happiness in the world and maturing into a headstrong individual in spite of all the unhappiness around you.

Also, lots and lots of hardships, especially when you're livin' in poverty like our lil guy up front. Shows up to town and just cause he's poor everyone thinks he's up to no good when he's just tryna make it. Accurate as fuck to the real world, but our main boy is idealistic in a frankly cynical world, going up and beyond to show his people that they deserve help, making bonds along the way with peeps of all walks of life.

The fact that all the Underground Residents are outsiders who are only allowed to be out at certain times despite keeping the entire infrastructure of the city going really hits home. Which is why doing the kisses is real sweet, like you’re indulging in someone else’s interest and showing them that it’s chill and people can actually like ‘em.

Game's got some heavy hittin' emotional beats too, I ended up kissing everyone (which was a cute lil way of showing the boy's solidarity with the people of his town) and for a lot of the important NPCs, their plots had lots of pretty resonant moments, shouts out to Leo and Zombie Mika especially. Bonding with the Girl's parents was cute too, also shouts out the Funny Bone City/Batayan's arc.

Other than that though, this game got vibes and chill moments for days, paying attention to everyone's schedules and catching them at different moments, bondin' over shit while you do their individual questlines. Discovering all the other weirdos living underground in squalor, reminded me of moments when I was younger having to figure out shit to do with my friends all while realizing we might've only had like 8 bucks between us, some real class solidarity goin on. Also a whole lotta real ass moments occurred like me setting my alarm an hour late and missing the bus multiple times which was a minor frustration but it totally made the goofy kid simulator even more realistic.

Totally cute talking with the Girl as the game went on, stargazing with her all while playing coy about how you gotta prove yourself to not be some dumb punk and actually a good guy, makes that ending sweet as fuck, pure lovey dovey cuteness. Would def make me cry on the right day.

Loved this lil game, all about having nothing in your life but the love in your heart as you keep goin' til you can finally find happiness.

Chulip quickly became one of my favourite games after I finished it. I live for these chill, small town Japan vibes. It’s a very slow, sometimes sadistic game that offers little guidance to the player. I can kinda see why it was so poorly received. But if you can get on its wavelength, you’re treated to one of the most relaxing and charming experiences you could have with a game. It features some surprisingly pointed social commentary too. It never gets too dark but it hits pretty hard as an adult.

I’m a big fan of the Japanese approach to open world design where the maps tend to be much smaller and far more dense than western open world games, and are focused on creating an experience that is closer to a simulation. Chulip achieves this perfectly and is its greatest strength. Its greatest weakness is that it does occasionally get a tad too obtuse, however, for the most part I don’t think it’s anywhere near as perplexing as people say it is. I 100%’d it and I’d say roughly 80% I did without a guide, maybe a little less. Anyway, game rules.

ive never found another game that makes me feel the same way chulip does, and its wholly unique in that sense. its super cozy, and the time management aspects almost remind me of something like Majora's Mask, where on replays of the game im always trying to get as many things done in one day as possible, and it's always a really fun time. it's also silly, but not to the point where its over the top. it puts something absurd in front of you, and everyone in the game treats it like its normal, which i think is a really good way of doing things. chulip is a game you can truly get yourself lost in, getting kiss after kiss after kiss, only to realize you've now been playing for 4 hours straight, and still wanna keep going. the only issues i'd say i have with chulip are that sometimes, certain solutions to puzzles can be a bit obtuse, but in the game's defense, every hint you need to solve them is there, you just need to find them. the other issue is that the save system can be rather unforgiving, and because it's VERY easy to take a lot of damage very quickly, you'd best be saving religiously. other than that, chulip is a hard recommend from me

This game is just fantastic. It has the familiar Love-De-Lic combination of comedy and despair, and it’s probably impossible to beat without a guide. But the manual (available on archive.org) has a guide sufficient to solve most of the tougher challenges, and if you do your best to avoid a guide you can still do a lot of the stuff in the game. You have to be patient, though. This is a game that asks you to spend a lot of time waiting and watching, and (especially early on) it’s not afraid to game over you several times in a row. But the gameplay works with the game’s themes really well, and this shit is just vibe city. Play it! Use a guide when you get stuck! Be patient!

Very creative, unique game. Playing it can honestly be unpleasant, so you have to be in the mood for the type of game that sacrifices its own fun to tell its story. (I personally softened it with emulator save states and speedups) I really like its art style and atmosphere, but I decided to put it away once the game got too obtuse for me to really know what I was doing without just following a walkthrough step by step. I'm sure that it's possible to finish this game guideless, but you have to throw a lot of stuff at the wall, both time and money, to see what eventually works when a lot of people might not like that.

"You could say that we are good negative examples of life."

Best played on a clunky original PS2, with a used copy, someone else's scribbles decorating the manual.

Chulip has an irresistible lassitude. You move into a shabby town, dig through garbage cans, and wait for the train while the music goes doo-ba-bop.

Design-wise, it's the most opaque game I've ever played. Conceptually, it's fantastic. It addresses themes like poverty and resilience with whimsy, imagining a world where the next generation can be healed by a kiss.

Os primeiros 30 minutos de Chulip são eventos pré-determinados pra te induzir a beijar. Chulip se esforça pra fazer a cabeça do jogador de que o mote do jogo é o beijo. Você é ensinado pelo seu professor (in game), e a primeira lição dele é botar em prática o "stealth" que você aprendeu quando resolveu um problema com o cachorro do vizinho, junto de "apertar triângulo" pra beijar.

Depois de jogar o jogo pela primeira vez eu disse pra mim mesmo "esse é o pior professor de todos os tempos, como ele quer me convencer de que o beijo é a coisa mais importante desse jogo se pra você beijar, é necessário dominar literalmente todas as outras mecânicas do jogo?". E é verdade.

Mas Chulip, como jogo, não é um professor comum, ele não mastiga e vomita informação em você, pra depois cobrar mini-testes. Jogar o jogo é o teste, e é um teste constante até o último minuto do gameplay. O método de ensino de Chulip com certeza não é ortodoxo. Ele te faz passar horas esperando e propositadamente te tira de possíveis momentos vitoriosos pra te ver afundando num limbo de frustração.

Ele não te ensina que pra conhecer mais pessoas você precisa aprender a andar de trem, ele não te ensina que é importante olhar os lixos da cidade (num nível de empacar o jogo se você não entender como funciona), ele não te ensina como manejar tempo, ciclo de dia e noite. Chulip não te ensina a jogar.

Porque "jogar" é conhecer, e você precisa conhecer sozinho. Conhecer os cidadãos e do que eles gostam, de quem eles não gostam, que horário eles vão dormir e que horário eles estão escovando os dentes. Chulip não te ensina como andar de trem, porque andar de trem é conhecer outra cidade, e conhecer outra cidade é conhecer mais pessoas. Como você quer se sentir recompensado por sair beijando um monte de pessoas, se você não as conhece. Pior, como você quer ser recompensado se você não conhece a si mesmo?

O beijo em Chulip é a materialização de entender 100% como funciona um indivíduo. Você não beija pra progredir no jogo -ao menos não deveria-, você beija porque ao tomar a decisão de mergulhar dentro dos sistemas do jogo, você trouxe junto a responsabilidade de conhecer quem move aquele mundo. Você literalmente não precisa apertar o triângulo (com exceção do último beijo do jogo) pra terminar Chulip.

Pode-se interpretar ser uma "falha de design" ou "preguiça", mas esse é um dos maiores trunfos desse jogo, ser despreocupado ao ponto de confiar no jogador que ele vai entender esse mundo, assim como os NPC's confiam em você pra te presentear com um beijo.

Você precisa viver Chulip. Entrar no mundo virtual ao ponto de sentir o cheiro das plantações, a brisa suave da cidade do interior. Só assim você aproveita a jornada, porque não é sobre beijar, é sobre criar laços com gente que você vai carregar pro resto da vida dentro do seu coração.

First and foremost:

If you want to play this game without any external help (like I did), you can totally do it. Don't let other people tell you this game is ridiculously obtuse, it's really not. However, the English translation omitted a single line that does make one part basically impossible without lots of random guessing. I promise it won't spoil the experience, but in case you don't want to see it, I advise you stop reading here.

The one thing the English translation omits that makes an unguided playthrough extremely annoying is "Dempou Soccer". That's it. More specifically, a computer should say "Dempou Soccer" on its screen. That's enough for you to complete the game now. Have fun.

By the way, if you play on emulator, I recommend allowing yourself to use savestates BUT ONLY after first experiencing the game for a few hours. Abusing them will diminish the experience, but some bits of this game are easy to fail and agonizingly slow to return to to try again.

I think the devs must have known how brutal each mis-step could be, and if one chose to avoid the consequences of a mis-step by save-scumming, how meticulously boring and tedious it would be to head to a save location, save, quit, and reload the game. On the GAME OVER screen, your twitching, heartbroken body routinely gets kicked by one of the teachers, followed by them walking away and leaving you there in the dust. It's a pretty accurate summary of how this game treats the player at times.

However, Chulip is a genuinely wonderful game. Like Backseat Gamer said in his analysis video of the game, Chulip is (probably accidentally) a great detective game. And unlike most of the most popular detective games, there is so much information to learn that won't help you progress, but will enrich your experience. The characters become more than NPCs, they become more like people, with their own lives and own problems and own passions. And you will want to understand them and you will want to help them and it's easier to forgive them for the way they act towards you at first.

One-year-later addendum:

Chulip embodies the Shabby Life. The rough life. Living with what money you got, if you got any. Getting by how you can. And looking at love as a way to escape it all. A fascinatingly unique game, that many imitators have attempted to emulate but haven't quite hit the mark yet (as far as I'm aware!).

Chulip is a really interesting iyashikei, using the ideas of Moon but putting to "work" instead of just debating them (Moon is a amazing gane too but is more about making people see what makes games great in a meta way instead of showing in the pratice). The amazing hub world with the cool cast is used in a very smart way to show how capitalism kills the individual with the town having A LOT of depressive old dudes regretting the life choices and the workers losing all the meaning in ther lifes and to Chulip the way to try to resolve those things when you have the same level in action as a child, is just trying to give love for everyone. Being nice, discovering the world of people, helping others, you can't do much to the world alone but you can at least try to make those people around you happy and be happy yourself finding love or just reaching your personal objective. Is a cute message in a game really well made in everything. Is really funny, is smart, have an amazing soundtrack and the only thing I can complain about is the day/night cycle being to short even if helps sometimes in the game loop. But is just an amazing game all the way through

Now this was one STRANGE game. You play as a character (who you get to name) who is a boy that moves into this new home and falls in love with a girl at first sight, however, attempting to kill or talk with her meets with nothing and then this tree...with a human face...tells you that the only way you can do this is to write a love letter. After a failed attempt, he points out you need to have a big enough heart to express your love, which is only achieved by...kissing strangers.

So now you're out to become a kissing whore to get yourself to a strong enough heart to capture your true love!

The easiest ones are those who after a few minutes, are kissable. Like Rocky the boxer who, after getting tired, is suddenly kissable. Or a rocket man who shoots off into the sky and then crashes back down, becoming kissable.

The harder ones are often hidden or require an item or even to do something very specific to achieve like chasing a monkey, waiting for a certain time of day for someone to appear, digging up a eggplant, riding the trains...all of these things can help you get a kiss from someone!

The game is absolutely insane! This concept is absolutely crazy and things only get stranger after you finally deliver that letter and go onto a strange journey underground... but beyond this, it's still a lot of fun if you're into this absurd humour and certainly a little replayable if you want to try and go through it all and unlock everything without using a guide, though some are so cryptic that you may need one...

Gameplay + Stream

Chulip is one of those peculiar titles that make you wonder how did they ever see the light of day, and this sentence has many sentiments behind it. If I'm trying to pitch it to someone I say "It's a game about kissing and poverty" just to throw them off

First, time has not been kind to Chulip. PCSX2 is your best bet to try this, and its localization is very rough. There are mistranslations, missing lines, and mangled contexts. This ends up making you lean more on the game manual which is just a guide that spoils many puzzles that are inherently unfair because of the translation issues. I wish there was a proper fan translation or restoration project.

Talking about Chulip is exhausting becase finishing it was, the game starts with a set pace and a very strong introduction but the more you dig in the drier it gets. Characters and events follow schedules similar to Shenmue as an example, so time burning is something to expect, and you'll find it in spades. I almost spent the last two hours of play on double speed and it still felt laborious.

But yet I was prepared for something like this. If you're looking for a fun time this is not your cuppa, but if you're willing to try a unique game with good artistic direction then by all means go ahead.

While the art and music are completely bonkers and absolutely to die for, the gameplay is so opaque it hurts.

I played this after Moon, which already had some completely preposterous stuff in terms of figuring out what to do, but it was tolerable. In this case, it involves a loooot of waiting around and guess work, which is why I'm giving it up. Keep in mind, I played this while spamming save states and it was still hard.

So yeah... I loved it at the start, but it sadly becomes very much of a drag after a couple of hours. I'd like to keep going to discover all this weirdo world has to offer, but I don't think I have the patience...

I'm off to go see the ending on Youtube.

This game has a very creative and unconventional approach to its world-building and it manages to create something oozing with identity. On top of this, the entire game acts as a very blatant sardonic property parallelling a wide variety of social and capitalistic issues we experience within society. It manages to present these ideas in its own charming way which gives a whole new layer of substance to the game itself. The game will beat you while you're down, pretty much everything in this game is extremely punishing and the allegoric properties display themselves pretty much as soon as you start the game. Expanding upon this, the game's brutality manages to create such a rich and uncanny atmosphere, things feel incredibly uneasy and unwelcoming until you progress further and begin to understand the world and how this society works. Through completing the various sidequests in the game, your heart grows stronger, allowing you to feel less vulnerable to the hardships of the world around you. Alongside this, everything runs through a day-by-day cycle, each individual lives the same daily routine until you interact with them, potentially sparking a change in how they go about things, or beginning a new side quest. Games built around this sort of system inherently grow stronger when it comes to their world as you end up learning and understanding so much of the setting and people who live there. Games like Majora's Mask or Outer Wilds for example have very detailed worlds that leave an impression due to how rich they are, and Chulip is no different. Another aspect of the game is the obtuse mystery-solving element. Through trading the various cards you get with all the people around you, you understand their relationships and begin to see how you can help this miserable world, and ultimately kiss them. That's one thing I should really emphasize too, this game's world truly is miserable. We see an abusive relationship within a broken household, individuals stripped of their passions due to society paying those focusing on productivity-based occupations far more than any artist, and the despair of living life after the loss of a loved one. It's a cruel journey and an excellent antiphrasis given the cartoony style with its art direction, musical direction, and dialogue, while also covering some extremely heavy subject matter. Some of what you have to do is a little out there for sure, in fact, due to the shortcomings of the English translation, it's quite literally impossible to figure out one of this game's puzzles without extensive trial and error or using a guide, however, they're not cryptic for the sake of being cryptic, it just forced you to really keep track of what's going on and note any of the connection you see in the world. The only other real issue with the game is the lack of depth put into the Underground Residents. They're individuals who are seen as outcasts of society as they fulfill the role of the artist. They alienate themselves from everyone as they simply can't fit in, yet we see that it's the underground residents the fuel so much of what makes society work despite their reputations. Once you help these people out (kiss them) they thank you and no longer exist within the underground, which is pretty obvious symbolism for them understanding their value and being able to move on and progress through life without being concerned about their role or lack of importance within society. This from a thematic standpoint is really deep and thought-provoking...however it's impeded heavily by the fact that the methods of helping out 85% of these guys are braindead easy, and are essentially stripped down to "be at the right place at the right time." That's it. And when so many individuals who, ironically are in the position that they're in due to their individuality and creative role as an artist with something worth presenting to the world, manage to lack an identity entirely because you go about kissing them in the same manner you do for almost every single one of these guys. It doesn't have to be incredibly intricate, just something simple to set these guys apart Jigsaw works really well for establishing them as unique...however this sadly isn't what's done and leaves the game really half-baked for a very vital aspect of the property as a whole. Overall though, Chulip is an unforgivingly unique adventure that anyone willing to try some more abstract games out should definitely give a go.