Time for a weekly penguin! Prinny! Pynrin! If you are confused, let me explain.

Pynrin comes from Nippon Ichi Software's 2020 title Poison Control that landed in the west a couple of months back. The game is set in Hell. Your protagonist wakes up not being sure how he/she ended up there. Two things are clear, however. First, as an actual corporeal person – as opposed to a mere soul – every demon on the block wants to posses your body. Second, you are not alone with your body – you share it with another soul, a girl calling herself Poisonette.

In Poison Control, Hell is comprised of multiple individual Hells, which are created by powerful, destructive emotions of, in this corner of Hell, women and girls. Some are already gone and stuck in their Hell, while others are still alive but on the fast track to damnation. That's where the game's title comes in; it is your job as the protagonist / Poisonette to cleanse these 'Belle's Hells' and save these souls.

As a carrot on the stick, there is a contest going on in Hell every 50 years. For each cleaned Belle's Hell you'll get a sticker and the one who gets enough of them first is considered worthy for salvation and a one-way ticket to Heaven. So, it is time to race other similarly soul-bonded folks for the prize.

Still with me? Good. Now, the contest is closely followed by Hell's own radio show, Higan Radio. The show points you to the next Belle's Hell and gives you a hint from the damned soul on how to purify it. These hints are read on the show as fan mail, by the way. One of the letters – and Hells – comes from Michiru Morita, a girl totally obsessed over a mascot character called Pynrin.

Pynrin is a penguin mascot whose name is an obvious anagram of Prinny, Nippon Ichi's very own mascot originating from the Disgaea franchise. In Michiru Morita's Hell, this character is everywhere – there are statues of Pynrin all over the place, pollen in the air is shaped like his face and even the Kleshas (basically demons) take their shape!

The gameplay is a mix of a turf-war system used to cleanse the 'poison' tainting the souls, a third-person shooter mechanic for combat and an RPG system to tie it all together. Of course you should combine the three to get the most out of it; getting a Klesha caught in the 'cleansing' area stuns it, exposing potential weak-points for pummelling.

So what do I think of it? In case you haven't noticed, I'm a bit of a Hell aficionado. From metal-infused DOOM and the Gothic magnificence of Devil May Cry, all the way to the over-the-top comic book flair of Darksiders, Hell gives you all the creative freedom you could ask for and an instant set of villains whose morality you don't have to stop to ponder.

This one? I'd call it 'the bubblegum Hell' – it's bubbly, vibrant and downright cheery. The game covers all the possible psychological torments that could poison a soul, ranging from love-life troubles all the way to kidnap and torture... but it is all set against this very pop-art-esque backdrop. I like it – it's surprising and fresh contrast to what you'd typically expect. Plus, the soundtrack is, as always with Nippon Ichi, fire.

That said, look at this Hell.

If you're interested in Poison Control, it is available for PS4 and Switch, both digitally and physically via NISA or NISA Europe stores. The Limited Edition with the CD soundtrack is sold out, mind, but the less-extravagant physical editions do seem to come with the digital OST.