Thoughts on horror games and Cult County by Renegade Kid

You learn something new every day: today I learned that Renegade Kid, an independent game development studio, was responsible for two critically successful horror games on the Nintendo DS: Dementium: The Ward and Dementium II. I knew of those games, but I didn't connect the studio responsible for Mutant Mudds with them. If you want, check out my shining review for Mutant Mudds on the 3DS right here. It's not even a remotely horrific game, unless a high level of difficulty is horrific for you (it borders on horrific for me).

Renegade Kid recently launched a Kickstarter campaign aimed at funding a new survival horror game, Cult County, for a slew of home systems, including the Wii U. I have backed the project because I want to see as great a variety of games as possible release for the Wii U. In truth, however, I won't be playing the final product.

Have you ever noticed that I don't play or talk about horror games much here on my blog? Maybe not, but it's true: I simply don't play them. The most horrifying games I've ever played are Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Fans of the horror genre probably don't consider Metroid to be scary at all, just atmospheric. But I can't handle much more. I'll happily play just about any other genre of video game. I just hope you can forgive me for that, and realize that everyone has a genre they avoid or won't even touch! Now you know mine. What's yours?

Enjoy this Pushmo puzzle, will you!

I already shared this puzzle in an Infendo post, but in case any of my readers who don't also read Infendo are interested, here's a Mutant Mudds Pushmo puzzle for you to enjoy!

If you haven't already gotten the game Pushmo for your Nintendo 3DS system, then know that I can't give this game enough praise. Try it out for yourself today!

How Mutant Mudds joins the ranks of great eShop titles: A Review

I'm going to start with a bold statement indeed: Mutant Mudds could not have been accomplished properly on any non-3D platform. There, I said it. It really is wondrous to behold in sweet 3D. You may have already guessed by now that I'm starting this review by going over Mutant Mudds' presentation. As you can hopefully see from the image on this post, Mutant Mudds presents an old-school, pixely graphical style. It just happens to work like a charm, especially with the 3D turned on. The added depth of 3D actually adds to and places even more emphasis on the 2D glory of the thing. In short, these graphics are colorful, appropriate, and not overdone. Lovely!

The gameplay in Mutant Mudds is equally impressive. As I mentioned in my first impressions post, you the player will take control of a young boy with a small set of skills: these are thankfully limited to jumping, hovering for a limited time, and firing what I imagine to be a pretty intense squirt gun in 40 levels of platforming action. This simplicity is reminiscent of video games past, when controllers themselves were limited. It is a refreshing approach in a gaming world in which 10+ button functions need to be memorized in order to play anything.

Level design in Mutant Mudds is pretty stinkin' good, but I think it could have been better. I mentioned above that the 3D effect in this game really lends itself to the 2D graphics, but now I would like to rave over the use of 3D in the levels themselves. Our intrepid hero can utilize special jump pads that actually propel him into different layers of 3D depth. This is undoubtedly the coolest use of 3D I've yet encountered. That's the "pretty stinkin' good" part of Mutant Mudds' level design. What I meant by "could have been better" is that there isn't a lot of variation within the levels. Also, I really lament the lack of checkpoints in the levels as well. Checkpoints would have lessened the pain of dying many, many times over in one level (which began to feel like the blow of a blunt blade after a while) while still keeping the challenge intact.

So it might not be the best game for the easily-frustrated (like me, I regret to say), but Mutant Mudds has earned a place amongst the best the Nintendo eShop has to offer. Are you planning on picking this one up?

Mutant Mudds: First Impressions

A little game called Mutant Mudds is the eShop game of the week. I spent a good portion of the morning playing it, so let's dig into my first impressions!

Mutant Mudds is a seemingly simple platformer that actually offers more depth than meets the eye. I mean that quite literally in at least one way: the levels feature 3 layers of 3-D depth that the player will find himself changing amongst throughout the game. This turns into a brilliant way to show off the Nintendo 3DS system's stereoscopic 3-D. It's a great-looking game.

The gameplay is pretty slick as well. Our character can jump and hover for a few short moments, as well as wield a simple gun to take out the game's primary enemies: mud blobs. The game starts out relatively easy, but soon the difficulty ramps up, providing a very satisfying challenge.

If there's one problem I can already identify in this game, it's a very minor one: sometimes the screen doesn't show enough to prevent the player from getting a cheap hit to the face or taking a few blind jumps once in a while. As far as I can tell, however, this doesn't take much fun away from the game at all. It's just a blast to play.

Expect a full review soon!