MushRoom Bounce!
February 17, 2014 4 Comments
Ouya’s biggest problem is it has a lot of games that sound like they’ll be fun and look just fine when you’re browsing the marketplace. Then you actually get them and you realize they’re, if not awful, bland and uninspired. MushRoom Bounce! looked decent and sounded unique. It didn’t take too long after booting it up to figure out that it’s actually pretty boring.
Pretty much anything movable can be pocketed, though the points don’t seem worth the effort.
There’s been games like this. You take various mushrooms or “interactive” objects and push them into holes (sort of like billiards) for points. Once you’ve pocketed all the mushrooms, the stage is cleared and you move on. I guess it’s kind of similar to Namco’s 1985 coin-op/compilation seat-warmer Motos, only with no sense of danger and a lot less polish. And although there’s not a whole lot technically wrong with it, MushRoom Bounce! is just plain not fun. That makes it kind of tough to talk about.
I guess I can focus on how the physics doesn’t always seem stable. To hit stuff, you simply walk into it. This one time, a mushroom was on the edge of one of the holes. I walked straight into it from the right side. In theory, this should have immediately pocketed the mushroom. Instead, it flew straight upwards. It was baffling. Not that this was a regular thing, but there was more than one instant where a mushroom seemed to take an unexplained irregular bounce. Other times, I would see the mushrooms get stuck in corners, or stuck behind objects, or lose all momentum for seemingly no reason. Controls are slightly clunky, which makes aiming a bit of a chore. Then again, since the game has no real sense of tension or ways to fail, the game feels more like a chore-simulator so I guess that’s appropriate.
A bigger problem is the menus themselves. I went to customize the PlayStation 3 controller I was using, but none of my actions with the controller while attempting this seemed to correspond to what was happening in the menu, and I was ultimately locked completely out of the game. Until I restarted my Ouya at least. I’m not just picking on the developers of MushRoom Bounce here, either. Bad menus have been a recurring theme during my adventures in Indie Land. Surely you guys that are making these games have yourselves played games at some point. And, when I go to the developers to ask them what happened, it typically boils down to “I never really checked them because I didn’t think they were important.” That’s not the case with MushRoom Bounce, by the way. I haven’t talked with the devs since they requested the review. But for God’s sake, check the damn things before you send the game out.
I didn’t play this far. I got to level 20 before I couldn’t take any more. I think the premium levels don’t start until a little bit after that, meaning I totally threw away a dollar. I could have gotten an over-sized novelty gumball or fed a starving African child for a week. My teeth thank you, Two Squid Games. The starving African child might not.
Despite what people might think, based on my reputation, I always look for positive things to say about games I review. I couldn’t come up with anything for MushRoom Bounce, besides the fact that it might be an okay title for very, very young children. There’s just no point to it. You can go for high scores on the online leaderboards, but with gameplay this tedious, why bother? You have items to shake things up, but there’s no limit on them, and thus I stuck to laying out large bombs and letting physics take over, then tapping in anything that wasn’t pocketed by the explosions. Maybe if this had been multiplayer, it might have been more tolerable. As is, it’s like playing Hungry-Hungry Hippos by yourself. As someone who was one of those sad kids that played Hungry-Hungry-Hippos by herself, I assure you, that’s about as fun as it sounds like. Which is to say, not at all.
MushRoom Bounce! was developed by Two Squid Games
$0.99 said doing mushrooms has never been so dull in the making of this review.
*Note, the video makes it look like there might be a multiplayer mode, but if there is on the Ouya version, I couldn’t find it, and we looked.
Indie Gamer Chick 
Thanks for your honest review. More details on the PS3 controller config issue would be helpful. To play 2-player, you just press a key on the 2nd controller, like an old-school NES or SNES game. Right now, I’ll admit the game would mostly appeal to younger children. We plan to release a more challenging version in the future.
If I remember, while in the configure menu, I tried to exit out of it and it kept cycling through other options, until I had somehow deactivated the controller from working. When I get a chance I’ll try it again.
I was using the PS3 controller primarily. We did try to turn on the Ouya controller to do a two player mode but it simply did not register, during the game or at any other time. We figured, since it doesn’t mention two players on either the Ouya’s page for it or anywhere in the game, there must not be a mode, but we *did* try it.
“We plan to release a more challenging version in the future.”
No, don’t. Dump this, try a different type of game. That’s the best advice I can give you. I’m not trying to be too discouraging, but this formula is simply never going to be fun, as far as I can tell.
Best of luck to you guys. I’ll be keeping an eye out.
That was a bit too needlessly harsh, don’t you think? With some serious tweaking there’s a reasonable possibility this game might get better.
I don’t think the formula has any potential to be fun and I stated that. This isn’t the cheerleader brigade, here. I stated my honest and full, authentic opinion. Which I was asked for, mind you, by the developers.