Quick Review: Mushroom 11

An… anti-platformer? …What’s that? Sorry, I got kinda puzzled by that descriptor on the Steam page.

Weird to think that you're technically the
eraser, not the blob itself.

A product by Untame released on October 15th, 2015, Mushroom 11 is set in a post-apocalyptic future. Mankind is practically gone, only its ruins remain, as well as whatever has survived and mutated. The strangest mutation of all, though, is a bizarre green blob, an amorphous organism, suddenly born out of who knows what. A mushroom, maybe? This thing cannot further grow, and also it cannot quite move on its own. That’s where you come in.

Fire bad! Good thing Blobby feels no pain!

You are the eraser. Left-click to erase a big circle of bloblike material, right-click to erase a smaller portion. The main gameplay mechanic here is that, when you erase a part of the blob, it grows it back elsewhere. Even if you quickly erase the whole thing, there’ll be one particle of the blob left that it can grow back from. There is only one requirement: To grow back, the blob has to touch solid ground, stationary items or water. It can’t grow in midair. Also of note is how the blob’s regrowth seems completely randomized; you have no control on how its particles return, aside from keeping the eraser active so that particles won’t grow in its circle. Part of the challenge is thus that your control on the thing’s movements are very limited, meaning that you have few options when it comes to making it go where you want.

Blobby VS the Spider-Thing.
My money's on the amoeba.

The game is divided into chapters, with each one upping the ante on tricky and inventive puzzles. Shoving the blob through a maze of tight passages? Sure. Having it cross areas of open lava? Of course! Fight radiated monsters? That too! One quest added to the game involves gathering as many DNA strands as possible, which is done by picking up special insects and plants. Customary of a good puzzle game, most of those aren’t mandatory but may require some extra thinking in order to actually grab them. Those are tallied at the end of a chapter.

The DNA strands allow for a variation in gameplay, as they become weak points on bosses encountered at the end of a chapter – gather all of the strands, the boss is killed. On a similar note, there are enemies, but since the blob is mostly indestructible, pieces of it destroyed by an enemy or a hazard (if it’s not destroyed in its entirety, that is) will reappear elsewhere on it, similarly to the eraser circle. This thing just won’t die – but it wants to travel.

Science lesson of the day: Levers, pulleys and catapults!

The next scientific question: Can an amoeba rope-climb?
Answer: Yes, but it'll be hella tricky.

Although I didn’t finish it (yet), I can safely say Mushroom 11 represents exactly what I wished all puzzle platformers were: An incredibly unique concept and gameplay mechanic, put through puzzles that take full advantage of everything that can be done with the idea. Adding more mechanics on top and seeing how those mix up. The amoeba’s randomized regeneration makes it extremely unwieldy, and forces it to count on gravity to move around (erase the back side of it, the front becomes heavy, it tumbles forwards, rinse and repeat). Since your only controls involve erasing the amoeba, you can split it into pieces, often allowing it to fulfill more than one task at a time. For movement, the big eraser is very useful, but when finesse is required (example: When climbing a rope in the late stages of the third chapter), the small eraser is a godsend.

I wasn't expecting to fight a shrimp-powered robot
today, yet here we are. Weird days.

The music is perfect for the mood, and the world around our unlikely protagonist (if we can call it that) represents well the somber idea of a fresh post-humanity world. Not everything is dead, but whatever still lives is trapped in a mechanical nuclear wasteland. So many hints of what existed before the current situation. All those graffiti on the walls. The warning signs, deep into the deserted factories. Those monsters standing at the end of every chapter… Speaking of, the chapters are very long and can easily take from 20 to 40 minutes to finish, depending on how good you are at “controlling” the amoeba. That goes for all 7 chapters, so there’s quite a bit of game here.  Side-note, I think I would have liked if gathering the DNA strands made a difference, like if it added a single cell to the blob each time – making a difference in the end. If the concept sounds right up your alley, then by all means, check it out.

Mushroom 11 is available on Steam for 14.99$ USD.