Kiwanuka's title screen, with its beautiful geometric visual design and psychedelic soundtrack, sets the tone for the levels to follow. What isn’t immediately apparent is that this charming puzzler is built on a single, elegant gameplay mechanic that perhaps doesn't offer enough depth to support the weight of an entire game.

Cast in the role of a tiny wizard, you must use your magic to escort a host of followers across a series of 2D levels. Touching anywhere on the screen produces a stream of lightning from your staff. This power can be used to direct your group through the world by pointing it towards the ground. More impressively, however, the staff also allows you to form towers of people from the following crowd.

These towers of people are the solution to most of Kiwanuka’s problems. Once erected, these human constructions can be toppled in either direction. They will pivot around the lowermost member, spinning until the uppermost member of the tower connects with another surface to form a bridge, or collides with a magical rock and is broken apart.

At first, navigating the world making by rods of disciples is a wonderful feeling. Realising you need to swing your tower in the opposite direction to the one you intended, and watching as the people pole connects with that final platform makes you feel like a genius.

Unfortunately, as Kiwanuka progresses, you realise that the puzzles are fairly one note. You get into a groovy: swing through a gap, swing the tower backwards, rinse, and repeat. It all too quickly becomes a bit monotonous.

When the game does introduce new obstacles - such as rapidly moving blocks that break your tower apart - they feel slightly unbalanced with the core of the game, creating steep difficulty spikes. Once you hit the first wall - or simply grow weary of all the swinging - you might find yourself abandoning the game altogether.

For the most part, however, Kiwanuka is a novel and inventive puzzler which drenched in charm. Its audio and visual design will suck you in, while its people-powered puzzles should keep you enthralled for a good few hours.