Kaze no Klonoa: Moonlight Museum

A side jaunt on the WonderSwan gave the Klonoa developers a chance to dig into the puzzle aspects of the original release, and no enemy suited their needs more than the Boomie. These bomb mice wrap up each of the primary Klonoa mechanics into a neat package: they can be carried, they squish under ceilings, they enable Klonoa’s throw-based double-jump, and they trigger interactables, all while exploding on a timer. By not disappearing upon being thrown, they additionally add a storage element that other enemies lack. Moonlight Museum squeezes puzzles out of each of these facets in a way the original Klonoa never bothered. Doors that open for limited periods once a switch is flipped perfectly intersect their timers with the Boomies, especially when one or multiple remote switch triggers is involved. A special category of block exists only to increase the possibility space of this intersection by spreading a Boomie’s blast in a specific direction, sending it through ceilings where switches sit out of reach. Whether they involve as many moving parts as these or rely solely on Klonoa hoofing it to a gap with a hot potato in his hands, the puzzles here lean on the Boomies as their workhorse.

Why the game elects to only deploy these enemies in the fourth world (out of five, not including the bonus EX world), then, is rather confusing. Moonlight Museum’s difficulty curve is agonizingly incremental. For the majority of the game, the primary tool for puzzles are Moo Boxes, emblazoned with the smiling face of the series’ cat-like mascot enemies. While they are storable, this is less a conditional attribute and more a side effect of its invulnerability: Moo Boxes persist indefinitely and effortlessly bounce off of spikes. They have their own quirks that make them essential for puzzles, such as weighing down floating spike enemies and turning them into platforms, and a paired air vent mechanic that sends Klonoa hurtling towards the ceiling if not blocked by a box has standout moments, but their presence shifts the game towards static Sokobon-esque territory. The resemblance is not lessened by the occasional appearances of their counterparts, which are literally pushable blocks that cannot be carried.

In this segment of Vision EX-5, a Moo Box must be used as a makeshift ceiling for the air vent below it, allowing the player to reach the door switch shown below Klonoa. As the box remains on this upper layer near the moon fragment, Klonoa can return for it and use it to double-jump up to the fragment. These puzzles test the player’s understanding of interactions between each object, but they don’t attempt to stress the player until late into the game. [src]

Once the game eases into its second half, the developers finally demonstrate their chops. Momentum transfer, for instance, while not a major aspect of the series, does exist when grabbing one enemy after another on Klonoa’s upwards trajectory. The game takes advantage of this with a few execution challenges based around timing for this and extends it to the aforementioned air vents, asking the player to place boxes in positions where they can be grabbed during the upwards climb to use as a makeshift parachute. Innocuous moving platforms become weaponized as block sliders, knocking boxes into inaccessible areas if the player lollygags solving a puzzle. The cannon-equipped Glibz appear in a perfunctory manner throughout until finally factoring in a very late-game puzzle as a means to detonate a Boomie prematurely. The developers evidently intimate understood every interaction in their engine yet only showcase it rather late.

The game’s lasting legacy instead comes in the form of its revamped level structure. Each level builds upon Door to Phantomile’s penchant for interlocking, pseudo-open-ended designs by placing each level’s exit behind a door, which opens once three moon fragments are collected. Often the door lies at the start of the level, accessible or not, and the player must navigate around a series of rooms to locate each fragment. Collecting an additional 30 dream stones in each level unlocks the EX world upon completion of the game, and here the game truly blooms, offering a full bevy of both strictly action-based levels and gigantic puzzle gauntlets. Beyond this, the game comes across as barren, both in its dull, monochromatic backgrounds and its lack of any non-puzzle levels in the lead-up to the additional areas, but this ultimately gave room for its handheld successors to expand upon its formula.