As I said earlier, Roogoo is simple in its design, but tosses so many tweaks into the mix that stacking blocks never gets too old, or too easy. Upon first seeing the manipulation of circles and triangles in such a darling atmosphere, the game may look like remedial kindergarten, but let me assure you that these simple shapes will give you the most intellectual stimulation they have since your preschool days. Roogoo may not look it, but it is a hard core puzzler, and things don’t stay calm for long until it attempts to simply melt your brain, like any good puzzle game should. After getting to the fourth or fifth level, you may even be tempted to retreat to the “casual” mode if you aren’t able to handle anticipating the moves you must make by glancing down at lower tiers, making for one hell of a mental balancing act.

Once you do conquer the campaign, there’s still some good multiplayer modes to be found, although their integration with the game’s online component could be better. There are two different modes, the first being race, where basically each player is given the same stage and the first to collect each set of all the shapes wins. Pretty basic, but the real star of Roogoo’s multiplayer is the Party mode, which functions as a sort of cooperative game where up to four players partake in tackling the same puzzle.

Each player takes turns manipulating a tier to make sure the shapes get through, and then passes the following tier off to the next player. Here, tensions and tempers can quickly escalate, and God help the guy who happens to be the one that makes the final screw up, causing the whole team to fail. Now after I have just gone into so much detail regarding the fun that can be had on the couch in Party mode, I must quickly slash away some joy because sadly, that experience will have to remain fixed in your living room alone. When going into either a quick or custom match, the only game type that seemed to be available was Race, which is disappointing because Party is where the real fun resides.

Graphics-wise, Roogoo is certainly not the game that you will gaze upon and realize that 50-inch HDTV was really worth the bounced check, but will look pretty on it. The adorable Japanese kind of presentation is charming, and all of the many colors presented are very rich. Avoiding another puzzle game trap is the variety of environments, which always keeps you in the same layout but does mix up the settings, which range from outer space, grassy plains, and scorching volcanoes. The game sounds just about as precious as it looks, with cheerful rhythms that might do well to soothe those nerves when getting your ass handed to you by sword-wielding meemoos.

In the ongoing tirade of poor arcade games, which Microsoft is promising to stop, Roogoo not only proves itself to be above the average level of expectations, but is an incredibly addictive puzzler that successfully nails the old gaming axiom: “easy to learn, hard to master.” The game possesses a very soft and fuzzy exterior, but underneath lies a perfect prickly challenge that will have you throwing down the controller one minute, yet masochistically returning for more. In the days of such prevalent online interaction, a more beefed up online component would have been a welcome addition, but even without it, Roogoo is easily one of the best puzzle games available on XBLA.