If it’s anything like mine, your Xbox One’s Kinect has sat unceremoniously in a cupboard for months, the most recent addition to an unnervingly large pile of abandoned tech. It was a pleasure, then, to discover that Fru’s

Fru’s setup makes for a hilarious and occasionally ridiculous three-hour experience. On initial examination, Fru is a simple platformer that sees you controlling a small, waif-like girl across blocky terrain with your controller. Its point of difference is you, your silhouette, which appears on screen and within its frame reveals an alternate-dimension landscape of the level, allowing you to change its makeup in order to advance your character through it.

While I felt eventually exhausted by all the body contortion required to cover the right parts of the screen with my silhouette - and more than a little mortified when I had an audience - Fru’s puzzles grew smarter and more complex as I made my way through, compelling me to continue. Each of the four chapters changes the way you play considerably, so I went from using my body to reveal hidden puzzles to creating a pathway through a building with a bent knee to blocking out pools of lava with my outstretched arm while trying to manage a carefully timed jump with the controller gripped in my left hand. Fru is devilishly difficult in its later stages, which makes for genuine fist-pumping moments when you progress, inch by inch.These puzzles worked best when the solution was initially obtuse, but careful exploration of the level and the various ways my body interacted with it revealed the answer. I experienced a wonderful sense of discovery as Fru teased out its possibilities, like the realization I could lift the little girl slowly up with my head, or catch her in a pool of water with my hand at the last second of a blind leap. These moments felt genuinely revelatory and made for a warm sense of intimacy, as it’s hard not to feel protective of the character when you’re interacting with her so physically.

Fru is less successful when it boils down to a physical challenge. While rare, whenever the goal seems to be “how extravagantly can you contort your body while still using the controller?” it's not quite as fun as Fru's more cerebral challenges - though contorting myself into a human pretzel did make an entertaining show for onlookers.The Kinect handles whatever Fru throws at it. Extremely precise motions - the extension of a finger, for example - are reflected back on screen, as are sudden movements. My silhouette was so well captured I had to take off items of clothing to avoid my sleeve accidentally hitting something it shouldn’t; perhaps another reason Fru is a game best played with the door shut and the curtains closed.