Chippy & Noppo Buried gem

A cooperative action puzzler developed by peakvox, a joint original label formed by O-TWO inc. and Fun Unit inc., and self-published by O-TWO inc. Set inside a toy factory, it has you gather parts scattered around each stage and run them through machines that change their color and shape, so you can assemble what comes out into a toy that matches a given blueprint. Two characters carry that work, Chippy, built for tight, narrow spaces, and Noppo, who can jump high, and per Steam's own description you either control both of them at once in solo play or split them one per player in multiplayer, cooperating to reach parts neither one could reach alone; stages range from forest to ocean settings. Per Steam's own tags it is an Action, Casual, and Indie title with Co-op, Shared/Split-Screen Co-op, Remote Play Together, and Steam Achievements. Released on March 8, 2023, it is Very Positive at 91 percent over 58 reviews (Steam's own review API records 58 total and 53 positive), a paid title, not free, fully launched and not in Early Access, with no AI-generated assets and, by Steam's own content descriptors, nothing sexual. It supports Japanese, English, and Simplified Chinese, with full voice acting in all three per Steam's own language listing, yet only about 15 of its 58 reviews, roughly 25.9 percent, are in English, and while it does have a Metacritic page, that page's Critic Reviews section still reads tbd, with no Kotaku, IGN, or comparable Western outlet coverage found. So this is a release that has already done the work of full localization, voice included, and the West has still barely reviewed or written about it. At just 58 total reviews, a small sample where a handful of reviews can move the positive rate by several points, its footprint has stayed modest in the roughly three years since release. O-TWO inc. is an established studio founded in 1991 and based in Osaka, with around 172 employees as of April 2026, not a small doujin circle, and while it has exhibited its own booth at BitSummit, Japan's largest indie game festival, no awards or nominations for this title were found. A Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game also exists.

Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together! The shape-swap co-op origin

The origin of this taste: Snipperclips: Cut It Out, Together!, a puzzle game developed by the British studio SFB Games (with additional work by Nintendo Software Technology) and published by Nintendo, released worldwide as a Nintendo Switch launch title on March 3, 2017. Its two characters, Snip and Clip, are each shaped like a distinct cardboard-cutout silhouette, and its signature 'snipping' mechanic lets one character cut a piece out of the other's body, reshaping them into whatever tool-like form, a hook, a wedge, a key, the puzzle at hand needs, whether that means catching a falling object, cutting a rope, or fitting through a gap. It is played solo, switching between the two shapes, or cooperatively with a second player controlling the other. That core, that solving a puzzle means physically reshaping a character built for one purpose into whatever the moment calls for, and doing it together, is the root Chippy & Noppo grows from: it keeps two characters with different traversal traits working as one shared tool, but moves the reshaping off the characters' own bodies and onto the parts they gather, running each one through a machine that changes its color and form until it matches a factory blueprint.