Lemme HUP! is an Indie Arcade Game Based on a Mario Party’s Hot Rope Jump

To make a great arcade game, all you need is a single idea. Lemme HUP!, from indie developer Ken Torii, borrows that idea from a minigame in Mario Party, taking a seed created by Nintendo and cultivating it into a glorious flower of a game.

The minigame in question is Hot Rope Jump, which saw players attempting to stay alive by jumping over a rope. 

In the case of Lemme HUP!, the object is to help a cute little amorphous animal called Gyubo jump over all manner of objects as they fly back and forth across the screen. 

If one of these objects so much as grazes Gyubo on its way past, you’re done. It’s back to the beginning of the stage for you. And avoiding them is harder than you might think, since they travel at different speeds, from different directions, and without a particular pattern or rhythm. Plus, the game throws the odd visual trick in your path to trip you up. 

In other words, you’ve really got to focus if you want to keep little Gyubo in the points. It’s a tricky challenge, but as you progress through the campaign Gyubo will steadily gain new skills to help him avoid the various flying objects. 

This is handy because the challenge increases too, with new mechanics being introduced as you move from stage to stage. 

The clever thing about Lemme HUP! is the way it combines a super-cute pastel-hued marshmallowy aesthetic with a challenging gameplay mechanic. Put simply, you just really don’t want to let Gyubo down. 

Lemme HUP! is available right now on the Google Play Store and the App Store. It’s free to download, too, so you absolutely need to check it out. Future updates are coming that will add unlockable costumes and skins too, as well as level ups.