Box Cover

Developed by Red Fly Studio, Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars is a 3-D platform game with puzzles to solve and battles to fight. When a mysterious meteorite crashes into the earth, it releases a strange dust which has a strange effect on life in the area.

The game starts off with quite a short intro video, certainly by today’s standards. Not a bad thing, mind. Sometimes you want to just play the game without watching a 5 minute intro that could easily have been much shorter. It has a quirky vibe to it, almost B-movie in style but not quite. My first impression was that this is going to be a humorous, fun game to play. Mushrooms becoming conscious – who wouldn’t?

You play a drifter called Pax, who turns out to be the only surviving member of his tribe which was wiped out in a previous war. It seems that the mysterious green dust has brought out the best in some species of mushrooms, and the worst in others. As the game starts, you wonder into a town and immediately your assistance is requested by some of the locals.

From the very beginning, you’re introduced to the notion of constructing “weapons” from various items that you find. A helpful “Gears” section in the menu shows you what weapon is possible and the various components needed to build it.
There are four types – bashing, slashing, thrusting and radical! (making a total of 25 weapons).

Although the in-game environments maybe “normal” to you or I; to a little mushroom, even the most mundane location is in fact a vast treacherous area, waiting to be explored. I guess very similar to Deadly Creatures.

As well as manoeuvring around the landscapes, you’ll have to fight off evil mushroom people and various animals too. Apart from using weapons which you can collect, you also have telekinetic powers at your disposal. When you point the wii-mote at the screen, a brain cursor shows you which environmental objects you can use you telekinesis on. Holding B “grips” the object and as long as you keep B held down, you can walk around and wave the object about or you can shake the wii-mote and Pax will throw the object. The former is more useful in puzzle-situations whilst the latter has its advantages in combat.
The telekinesis ability feels quite responsive. It’s not flawless but since you don’t need to move too many objects with too much precision, what this game offers is satisfactory.

Different weapons have different attacks and their individual strength is represented with a star system. To an extent, you have to decide which weapon to use when as there are slight disadvantages/advantages to each one. Although not perfect, this is a good attempt at trying to prevent the player from using the same weapon for a long period of time. However, there will be ones that will get used more than others and vice-versa.

Initial impressions of the controls are okay. There’s not much on offer to begin with. The camera is operated by using the D-pad and although a relatively minor thing, I didn’t notice any major problems. Holding down Z makes Pax block but sometimes I still got hit and when you’re fighting about 4-5 enemies, this can be quite frustrating.

You will eventually learn a skill where you can finish off a weakened or stunned enemy by hovering the wii-mote cursor over the foe and pressing B. You can tell an enemy is close to dying when it starts bleeding and pulling this “Spore Punisher” move off ensures a speedy kill.

Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars scores most of its originality points with their creativity on weapons design. A simple stick, chain and bottle cap combination produces a mace-like armament. More exotic mixtures of everyday objects can be found and I found this very charming. Especially in the latter part of the game where if you find all the pieces, you get to build something very similar to a light-sabre. I’m not even a Star Wars fan and I found this very cool; especially when used in conjunction with Pax’s telekinesis powers, you truly feel at one with the f…fungus.

Just a minor annoyance – when you build a new weapon, it gives you no other choice than to equip what you’ve just made. Sometimes you don’t want to, however, a quick shake of the nunchuk brings back the weapon you had on previously.

As you progress through the game, you’ll find more and more chunks of the meteor. Gathering these will give you upgrades. Nothing you can choose; just increasing your maximum health and the amount of damage you spore punisher move inflicts.

I would liked to have seen more humour in a title like this. Early impressions lead me to think this might carry the same sort of charm Earthworm Jim did. Don’t get me wrong, there are funny bits. I remember one level where after putting all the effort into building a make-shift rocket, you pilot it through an obstacle smeared route only to sophisticate-ly land in a toilet. I like it. I also am aware that the developers probably didn’t plan on making an Earthworm Jim but when the game is as “wacky” as this, I just think a substantial amount of humour is beneficial.

The audio in this game suits the mood of it very well. At times, it’s very conventional up-beat music but there are also some lovely down-tempo ambient tracks too. A very enjoyable mixture that compliments game-play very well. Sound effects are spot on too, don’t mean to bring up the light sabre style weapon as an example again, but the accompanying electrical buzz sounds excellent.

The game is fairly short; clocking in at about 8 hours. For the completionist, there are lots of collectibles to find – which in turn, unlocks various pieces of artwork.
I also finished the game without having constructed a lot of the weapons. If you have the effort and curiosity, then you probably will end up going back and replaying levels in order to try and build as many as you can.

There are several mini-games you can play, single and two player. But they’re not great and I certainly wouldn’t choose them over the main game.

Overall, a fairly fun game to play. It’s certainly very different and has enough qualities that will make you remember Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars. This game doesn’t take itself too seriously but the attention to detail in terms of level design and concept is fairly high.
I would liked to have seen more variation in un-lockables. Maybe a few more levels too, which would have stretched the lifespan of the game by a few more hours.

+ Concept of the game
+ The choice of weapons you can build
+ A few reasons to play after completion

- Un-lockables feel a bit “samey”
- Very frustrating on a couple of occasions
- Fairly short game

Score – 7.5/10