Kaze and the Wild Masks is a Platform Game developed by PixelHive and published by Soedesco. The game opens with two treasure-hunting rabbits, Kaze and Hogo, exploring a mysterious ruin on Carrotland. They discover a mysterious ring, which Kaze touches, causing her to get blasted away. When Hogo moves to protect her, he's absorbed into the ring. Suddenly, a statue of a female figure with a staff seems to come to life and begins blasting lightning everywhere. Fortunately, Hogo comes out of the ring, now having taken the form of a floating spirit creature, creates a shield around Kaze, and carries her away from the island and to safety.
Returning to solid ground, Kaze discovers that the fruit and vegetables of the land have been transformed into monsters terrorizing the people by Typhoon, the female staff-weilder from before. To atone for her mistake, Kaze sets out on a journey back to Carrotland to undo the curse, defeat Typhoon, and return Hogo back to normal. She does so with the assistance of the eponymous Wild Masks, four masks containing the spirit of heroes from the past that grant the wearer their power.
Kaze and the Wild Masks was released in 2021 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam.
This game provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Kaze, who also doubles as a Badass Adorable, might be a pint-sized bunny girl, but she's more than capable of conquering both armies of mutated crops and some seriously tough platforming later. On the other side of things, Typhoon (the main villain) is a Dark Action Girl, through her powerful sorcery and betrayal of her old friends and the Rabbit Sage in the distant past.
- Airplane Arms: Kaze does this while running at maximum speed with the Lizard Mask on.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: The ring around Kaze's right ear flips sides depending on which way she's facing.
- Achievement Mockery: "Oops!", which you earn for finishing a stage without picking up any crystals.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: Every phase of Typhoon's boss fight except the first involves fleeing from a wall of ethereal hands, or, in the final phase, Typhoon herself.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: "Gusty Cliffs" and "Hurry Hurricane" both involve fleeing from a gigantic hurricane.
- Alliterative Name: Typhoon's three subordinates and bosses encountered at the end of each island: Mother Mona, Buck Beet and Olaf Onion.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Several can be found:
- If you lose a bonus stage, you're given the option to immediately retry.
- Upon returning to the main level after finishing a bonus stage, you'll be placed on safe ground not too far from where you found it, to avoid dangerous backtracking if it's well-hidden.
- When you finish a level, any collectables — KAZE Letters, bonus stages cleared, the purple medal from collecting a hundred crystals — you successfully got will stay unlocked, meaning you don't have to go out of your way to collect them again if you're attempting to 100% it on another try.
- A heart can usually be found very close to the check points, more often than not alleviating the problem of becoming a One-Hit-Point Wonder after dying once.
- If you whirl off a ledge using the Spin Attack, you'll slow down for a second or so as you begin to fall; during which time you can jump back up if you're quick enough and you didn't mean to do it. You can also use it to slightly boost the distance of your jumps, which can help a lot with the platforming.
- If you complete a bonus stage and then die afterward, it'll stay completed and you won't need to do it again. Likewise, if you hit a Checkpoint, you'll also keep any crystals or KAZE letters you had when you touched it.
- When you start or respawn in a level with a "moving hazard" gimmick (IE. the hurricane in "Gusty Cliffs"/"Hurry Hurricane" and the toxic waste in "Toxic Lake"), it doesn't start moving until you walk forward a bit, giving you time to get your bearings before you begin.
- Badass Adorable: Kaze herself. She's a cute, young rabbit girl with big expressive eyes and floppy ears, who unhesitatingly battles her way through armies of mutant crops and
some nail-bitingly tough platforming. - Beat the Curse Out of Him: Defeating the enemies causes them to turn back into normal fruit and vegetables.
- Bittersweet Ending: If you fail to collect all 31 red gem medals before defeating Typhoon, the game ends with her defeat but Hogo is still stuck in his spirit form, as Kaze tearfully embraces him. Subverted if you manage to collect all the red gem medals, where Kaze uses Typhoon's staff to return him to normal.
- Brutal Bonus Level: Upon finding and completing all seven of the Bonus Crystals in each world, you'll use them to unlock a secret, super-difficult level hidden behind the ominous-looking gate.
- Continuing is Painful: If you die, you respawn with no Hogo and only the crystals/KAZE letters you had at the last checkpoint you crossed, with you losing the rest. You will also immediately fail if you're in a Time Trial.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Provided she doesn't directly touch the magma pool at the bottom, Kaze can handily survive platforming and flying through the burning hot caves of Volcanic Star.
- Cool Big Sis: If Hogo's Steam card title is anything to go by, he's Kaze's little brother which puts her squarely into this trope.
- Dash Attack: Kaze can use these in her Shark and Tiger forms, albeit in different capacities. The Shark Mask lets her dash underwater and in any direction, while the Tiger Mask can dash both on the ground — for further than her usual Spin Attack — and through the air to extend her jumps.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: As expected, the main bosses glow brightly and then explode when defeated.
- Disproportionate Retribution: As shown in flashback illustrations, due to being passed over for the title of the sage Typhoon responded by stealing the staff, using it to turn vegetables into monsters and harassing the innocent denizens of the land, before she got sealed away.
- Distressed Dude: Hogo is a downplayed example. While his spirit manages to escape and continue helping Kaze throughout the game, his now-soulless body is captured by Typhoon and needs to be restored.
- Double Jump: The Lizard Mask lets Kaze jump again in mid-air, and also attack with diving kicks.
- Ears as Hair: Typhoon is shown in flashbacks curling her ears in such a manner that they resemble large hair buns.
- Ear Wings: With the eagle mask equipped, Kaze's ears grow feathers and turn into makeshift wings. To a lesser extent, she can also use them in her regular form to extend her jumps and and control her descent.
- Evil Mask: Forgotten Mask/Lizard Mask is implied to be this. Upon wearing it, Kaze goes berserk and player loses control of her movements except for jumping and attacking. While other Wild Masks are shown in story cards to be made from the essence of three heroes (tiger, shark and eagle), the Lizard Mask is found at the ominous looking lizard statue like the one where the rabbit sage found the mysterious scroll which he hid away.
- Feather Flechettes: Kaze can throw razor-sharp clusters of feathers in her eagle form, letting her attack from a distance. However, they can be unwieldly due to their arcing trajectory.
- Final-Exam Boss: The final boss fight has a brief segment where you use each of the Wild Masks in different sections to flee from a wall of hands.
- Fireball Eyeballs: While wearing the lizard mask, flames erupt out of Kaze's eyes.
- Grimy Water: The green toxic waste in "Toxic Tides" kills you instantly, regardless of your health. Naturally, a lot of ziplines and collapsing platforms are precariously placed over it, and one of the the Bonus Stages involves collecting crystals in — and then outrunning — a rising and lowering pool of the stuff.
- Ground Pound: Kaze has one in the form of a two-footed stomp straight downward, which she can use to crush enemies, reveal hidden caches of crystals, and bounce higher off of trampolines and the flying beets with helmets.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Kaze herself. She wears a sleeveless jacket, long Scarf of Asskicking, and shoes, but doesn't wear pants, leaving the lower half of her pale underbelly on display. Which is an interesting decision, considering almost everyone else in the game — besides of course, the mutant fruits and vegetables — is a Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: The pickle walls are sliced in half when defeated.
- Heli-Critter: Kaze herself, who can spin her ears like helicopter rotor blades to slowly hover through the air. The way she does it brings to mind both Dixie Kong and Rayman.
- Heroic Sacrifice: As shown in the flashback, the three champions of the animal clans (tiger, eagle and shark) and a group of rabbit monks gave up their physical forms and turned themselves into the titular Wild Masks and red gems respectively, in order to seal away Typhoon in her staff and put a stop to her rampage.
- Idle Animation: Kaze has several if she stands still for approximately ten seconds or so, often accompanied by her uttering little sounds and looking directly at the screen with an impatient expression:
- Glances to her left and right warily.
- Folds her arms and pouts at the screen.
- Winds her arm backward in the manner of an arm rotation warm up, then gestures forward with her hands.
- Stretches, yawns, and closes her eyes, before rubbing them with her ears to wake herself up.
- Informed Species: The eagle as depicted in the cards doesn't really look like a bird of prey at all, more resembling a humanoid stork or heron with their long yellow beak and white plumage.
- Interface Screw: The extra level "Watch Your Steps!" in World 1 is set high in the sky. Falling would normally be enough of a problem as it is in such a stage, but after taking a few steps forward, the platforms become invisible; meaning you can only know what's safe and what's a deathpit by paying attention to where the crystals and enemies are. You will need the helicopter ears for this one.
- Invincible Minor Minion: Several of these appear across the game, including the floating helmet-clad Beets, the fruit-launching Bananas, and the burning, flying pumpkins.
- Law of 100: Collecting one hundred (or more) crystals in a level awards the player with a crystal medal. Collecting them all rewards the player with an extended ending where Kaze returns Hogo to normal.
- Mask of Power: The titular Wild Masks. They embody the spirits of heroes from the distant past, and grant Kaze their powers when she puts them on.
- Mime and Music-Only Cartoon: The game contains no dialogue at all; its story is told exclusively through cutscenes and the images unlocked by collecting the letters.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Many of the plant monsters gain mouths full of sharp teeth, such as the corn cobs and the onions.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Kaze and Hogo accidentally cause the game's events when they touch the mysterious ring in the Carrotland ruins; releasing Typhoon, turning all of the land's fruits and vegetables into horrible monsters, and separating Hogo's soul from his body. After Hogo — now in the form of a small red ghost — saves Kaze by sealing her inside a magic shield and moving her to safety, the two immediately set about fixing things.
- Nintendo Hard: The platforming sections can get seriously tough at times, especially during the Hidden Levels you unlock by finding all the Bonus gems in each island's stages.
- No Ontological Inertia: After Typhoon's defeat, the plant monsters all return back to normal.
- Ominous Visual Glitch: Damaging Typhoon causes the screen to violently glitch out before transitioning into the next phase of the battle.
- One-Hit Kill: While you can jump back up from certain hazardous terrain (like thorns) after taking damage, others such as the lava pits and toxic waste will kill Kaze immediately on contact, regardless of her level of health.
- The same rule also applies to the giant tornadoes from "Gusty Cliffs" and "Hurry Hurricane", and the walls of ethereal hands during the Final Boss battle with Typhoon.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Kaze's health works a lot like Crash and Aku Aku or Spyro and Sparx; if she doesn't have Hogo and his shield with her, she'll immediately join the Black Rabbit's Owsla upon taking a single hit. It's especially noticeable in the bonus stages, where you can't take Hogo with you into them.
- Planimal: Some of the cursed fruits and vegetables take animal-like forms, such as pineapple crabs, dragonfruit porcupines, and starfruit starfish.
- Panthera Awesome: The Tiger Mask, which gives Kaze sharp claws and a big boost to her agility; letting her hang onto and jump off of walls and perform a powerful pounce attack that also lets her dash through the air to clear large gaps or grab nearby walls more easily.
- Plant Mooks: All the game's enemies are Carrotland's fruits and vegetables mutated into ferocious, ugly monsters by the Evil Sorcerer Typhoon.
- A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: Typhoon was one of the rabbit sage's pupils. After being passed over for the title of his successor due to her callous personality, she stole her master's staff and used it to turn the land's plant life into monsters that wrought havoc on the land.
- Righteous Rabbit: The lead heroine, Kaze, is an adventurous and good-natured bunny. Despite accidentally causing the events of the game through touching the mysterious ring, she immediately sets out to put things right.
- Rise to the Challenge: The pool of toxic waste in "Toxic Lake" slowly rises up through a mostly vertical-orientated level, forcing you to outrun it before you're submerged in the stuff. This happens again in "Volcanic Star", except this time, you're outrunning a rising pool of magma.
- Scenery Porn: The retraux 16/32-bit visual style really lends itself well to the game's various locations, with detailed and gorgeous-looking illustrated backgrounds that hark back to classic platformers of the day.
- Sequel Hook: Collecting all of the bonus crystals results in a cutscene of an underground statue of the enigmatic lizard beginning to glow green and flare to life while a group of Lizard Folk watch in bewilderment.
- Shout-Out: A rather funny one occurs in the game's pre-title screen introduction, with a pixelated splash card
parodying the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screen that was common in 1990s-era arcade games, complete with a knife, fork and plate of vegetables laid out almost exactly like the FBI logo."Winners eat all their veggies!" - Songs in the Key of Panic: The bonus stage theme gets faster and more frantic as the timer comes close to running out, complete with a beeping alarm at the last ten seconds.
- Spiritual Successor: The game plays near-identically to the classic Donkey Kong Country games. Kaze plays very similarly to Dixie Kong, the Wild Masks function much like the Animal Buddies, and many other elements of the games are reproduced; for example, giant crossbows that Kaze can launch herself out of stand in for the series' signature barrel cannons.
- Gameplay-wise, Kaze is also highly reminiscent of other classic platformers from the same or following eras, such as the Crash Bandicoot, Rayman, and Jazz Jackrabbit series.
- With its wall-kick and air-dash abilities, the Tiger mask basically turns Kaze into X (sans the shooting).
- Spin Attack: Besides jumping on enemies and ground-pounding, this is Kaze's main form of attack as her regular self. She performs a fast pirouette-like spinning kick, which can also boost her speed along the ground.
- The Spiny: Several of the ferocious vegetables have characteristics that make attacking them in certain ways impossible or even outright harmful. The corn cobs, for example, cannot be spun into from the front due to their huge teeth, and the dragonfruit porcupines cannot be jumped on for obvious reasons.
- Story Breadcrumbs: The game's backstory is explained by "cards" obtained by collecting the four "KAZE" letters in each level, told through hand-drawn illustrations with no dialogue.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Kaze gains the ability to breathe and swim deep underwater with the Shark Mask, along with being able to attack while submerged and propel herself through strong currents. Kaze herself technically also has them, given that she'll never drown even while stuck underwater in her regular form; but can only swim on the surface or dive a short distance on her own before automatically resurfacing.
- Time Trial: These become available for all non-boss levels after you beat them once. You can earn one of three coloured medals — Gold, Silver or Green/Red — depending on how fast you get to the end of the stage, and compare times between different players on an online leaderboard.
- Transformation Trinket: The eponymous Wild Masks, which let Kaze partially change into the forms of heroes from the distant past — as well as use their powers — when she puts them on.
- Unusual Ears: Kaze herself, less so in their appearance and more to do with what they're capable of. While huge ears on a rabbit are of course pretty standard, Kaze uses hers to glide short distances — or outright fly if she's got the Eagle Mask on — Spin Attack enemies with, as extra limbs for climbing, lifting and throwing things, and to pull herself back so she can launch out of giant slingshots.
- Variable Mix: The level selection maps all use variations of the same basic theme, but they change in instrumentation and tone depending on which Island you're currently on.
- Video Game Flight: Kaze gains the ability to fly through the air — with her ears becoming feathery wings — when she puts on the Eagle Mask, and can also razor-sharp clusters of feathers to attack. She can also use the updrafts from the forest fires in the level "Pumpkin Pyre" to fly upward with her helicopter ears.
- Voice Grunting: Kaze doesn't speak — much like everybody else in the game — but can be heard uttering small grunts and calls of "ha!" and "hey!" when she performs actions like jumping and attacking, yawning or grumbling annoyedly during her idle animations, and makes a loud echoing yell whenever she dies.
- Wall Jump: The Tiger Mask gives Kaze this ability, letting her hang onto walls using sharp claws before jumping off of them. She can also use the claws for a powerful dash attack that can be used in mid-air.
- Weakened by the Light: The deadly Anglerfish ghost that chases you in "Spirit Sprint" zig-zags this. The blue light flowers slow it down, while the red ones boost its speed; more often than not giving it a chance to attack you.
- We Used to Be Friends: The flashbacks show that the tiger, eagle and shark champions (which would eventually become the Wild Masks) have grown up and trained alongside Typhoon and the unnamed rabbit boy who would become the next sage, before Typhoon turned evil (or simply revealed her true nature).
- Winged Humanoid: The Eagle Sage is shown to have both human-like arms with Feather Fingers, and angel-like wings on their back.
- Would Hurt a Child: Typhoon is seen about to attack a young bunny in one of the cards. Fortunately, the next card reveals that she was sealed off inside her own staff before she got the chance.
