Quick Review: Juanito Arcade Mayhem

Juanito, a young kid and fan of retro games, sees his arcade cabinet attacked by outer space mutants called the Clonocells, which proceed to glitch every game. With the help of his alien buddy… okay… Juanito goes into the games and, armed with nothing but his various pajamas and a handful of weapons, he must do some cleanup within the games themselves!

Ahhhhhh! Flashing lights in a video game!
That's never happened before!

So I have to deal with Clonocells AND falling blocks?
Do I get something for making a full line?

Game Ever Studio brings Juanito Arcade Mayhem (or Arcade Mayhem Juanito?), a game released to Steam on August 3rd, 2017. It’s basically a shooter, with Juanito at the bottom, shooting upwards at the Clonecells bouncing off the floor. Later enemies would take more hits to die and have their own guns. Juanito shoots with Z, and can do a sliding dodge with X. There’s 8 worlds, each containing 10 levels, and each world is based on a famous retro property. In each world, there’s a new gameplay mechanic inspired by that property: In the Tetris land, tetrominoes fall from the sky. In the Arkanoid-inspired world, bricks stand in the way, and both Juanito and the Clonecells can break them, while Juanito stands on a platform that can grow or shrink with power-ups. The enemies in the Pac-Man world can only be hurt after Juanito collects a power pellet, and the level wraps around itself. You get the idea.

I feel the need to break all of those blocks.

On top of it all, as he progresses, Juanito gets new weapons and power-ups. For the former, there’s a fast-shooter called the Mayhem, and a gun called the Eureka that shoots bubbles in arcs in the direction of nearby enemies (hey, Juanito can only shoot upwards, that makes it very difficult to hit enemies close to the ground). As for power-ups, the usual: A shield, something that stops time for a moment, and so on. There’s roughly one new unlock per world. Juanito can get up to a three-star score on every level, and later worlds need to be unlocked by having collected over a certain number of stars. The advantage is that, as power-ups are found, earlier levels become easier to beat.

I have yet to try this game in co-op...
I just need a friend who likes crazy-tough games.

Both the main quest and the unlockable Survival mode can be played alone or with a friend, in couch co-op or across Steam Remote Play. Juanito has access to several alternate costumes, as well; in case my screenshots didn’t show it clearly enough, I favored the Mega Man-inspired one for my playthrough (though there are Mario Bros., Street Fighter, and Christmas-themed ones available from the start). Costumes even have unique animations for victory, defeat, and even when idling! Actually, the animation is one reason this game looks so good – the animation is fluid, active, a treat to watch. (Spare me the cries of “But it looks like CalArts!”, please.)

Knowing me, you'd think I would go for the Mario one.

Good thing I'm glitch-proof!

I love that the levels pay tribute every way they can; I mentioned the gameplay, but the design of the worlds is wonderful. Chock-full of references to the game being given an homage (Tetris has the Russian buildings, the boss at the end of the Pac-Man world involves the kill screen..). The music, as well; you recognize the sequences of notes from those famous games, and how they’re incorporated in the tense, energetic tracks in this series of tributes. That's pretty awesome.

The little hammer-tossing kid is NOT HELPING!

I don’t have much in the way of criticism for this one. As far as difficulty goes, I’d say it’s definitely on the tough side. Several moments are rather difficult, but like I said – earlier levels get easier over time, just got to get further through the campaign. But hey, an homage to the retro classics ought to be hard like those classics. An auto-fire would have been fun too, because I’ve been mashing the Z key like crazy to use the regular weapon. And if that’s the only flaws I can think of, I can live with that! Maybe I’m just bad at it, as it took me forever to actually learn to use the sliding dodge with the X key effectively. The game seems aware of its own difficulty, as several achievements are handed out when you perform poorly at the game.

I recommend this one, just be ready for one Heck of a challenge. Juanito Arcade Challenge is available for 9.99$.

(Also, oh hey, it's my birthday today.)