Tiny Review: Mutant Mudds
Dementium developer Renegade Kid releases its first self-published game this week, the 3DS eShop title Mutant Mudds. At first, it seems like a very simple game with a 3D gimmick: you can jump, shoot, and hover, and you can move to one of three different “planes” of action by jumping on certain blocks in the level, with the goal of collecting all the floating items in each.
However, it very quickly becomes obvious that Renegade Kid is not messing around, as the difficulty curve quickly jumps, and you find yourself dying multiple times just to learn the layout of each perilous world.
Three things that are fab:
- The chiptune soundtrack by Troupe Grammage is fantastic, sounding like the classic soundtrack Capcom never made. Listen to it (and buy it) here! Proof!
- Every single level has a hidden second level inside, styled after either the Game Boy or Virtual Boy. These are quite a bit more difficult than the main levels, and help the game more than keep you occupied.
- Even without the 3D turned on, this has some of the best 3D ever. Each of the game’s three planes is clearly distinct, and I feel like I’m sort of forced to refocus my eyes to see the different distances. This is an illusion of depth that works even without stereoscopic effects.
Three things that are butt:
- This game is harrrrrddddddddd. While for the most part I enjoy and respect the challenge, there are more than a few spots that seem challenging in a cheap way — traps that are connected to each other, and timed, and whose cycles are slightly off; enemies who fire projectiles from offscreen, that kind of thing.
- The levels are long, and many of the obstacles will knock you back quite some distance. You then have to contend with maybe dying in a spot you’ve already passed, which isn’t terribly fun … or worse, having the timer elapse because you’ve kept backtracking, which is really not fun.
- Those guys who blow gusts of air at you, causing you to be pushed out to the plane closest to the screen, are total jerks, and often placed on top of platforms that disappear every other second (see complaint #1).
Score:
- Mega Man with more collecting
Buy: Nintendo 3DS (Flame Red, Black, & Blue)
Find: Nintendo DS/3DS release dates, discounts, & more
See also: More Mutant Mudds media
tags / eshop / gaming / mutant mudds / nintendo 3ds / renegade kid / review / 3ds
