Full disclosure: I hadn’t heard of Bakeru until Graham mentioned it to me. Graham always has his hands on the video game pulse, gliding them over Xwitter or Steam or wherever and waiting for that “ker kun, ker kun” of a new Cool Thing. And that cool thing is Bakeru, described by its Steam page as “Japan-esque”, but is in actual fact, very Japanese. I mean, you travel around 47 Japanese prefectures as a metamorphing tanuki who bashes evilness with his taiko drum sticks. Come on.
What I hadn’t suspected was Bakeru’s chops not only as a platformer, but as a means to increase your chances at success in pub quizzes. The game is a certified trivia Tardis, where you’ll learn all sorts about Japanese culture as well as just like, the colour sepia being a genus of cuttlefish.
