Game Review: Land of Mushrooms

By Al

Players: 1-2
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC (Steam & Epic Game Store)

Copycat games are nothing new, but I always find them to be interesting as they can sometimes surpass the game that influenced them. Suika Game is a puzzle game that originally released in Japan back in 2021, and got a US release last year. It was a viral hit even before its US release, and its success spawned many imitators. One of those imitators is the game we're going to be looking at today. Land of Mushrooms is a game that's currently available on all current platforms, and it definitely owes its existence to Suika Game. We're going to be taking a look at it today on the Nintendo Switch and see how it compares, and how it holds up on its own. Enough intro, let's dive in!

I'll admit that I'm not totally sure if Suika Game came out of nowhere and invented the gameplay formula that it popularized. I play a lot of puzzle games, but I'm by no means an expert. That said, I personally can't recall ever having played a game quite like it. I do know that some people like to compare it to 2048, but it really is very different from that. For those that aren't familiar with it, I'll explain the basics. Suika Game, and by extension Land of Mushrooms, is a match-two puzzle game where your goal is to create as many of the biggest items as possible before you completely fill up the gameplay area. Suika Game features fruits, and Land of Mushrooms features mushrooms. You have twelve sequential items that go up an evolutionary chain, and creating pairs makes the previous two mushrooms into a single one in the next stage. They match simply by touching, but this also means you block off some mushrooms from each other if you're not careful with your placement. There is some degree strategy regarding dropping the mushrooms into the field of play, but the physics of the game often mean that things can end up falling in ways you didn't anticipate. If a mushroom falls out of the field of play, in this case a jar, then it's game over. Mushrooms can fall out by simply rolling off the top if there is no space, but they sometimes can be knocked loose by way of a combo, or even bounce out of the jar in certain situations. For reasons I'll get to later, most games of Land of Mushrooms end rather quickly. Don't worry though, as this game relies more on high scores than anything else. There are leaderboards you can get onto daily, and that's enough for some people.

Now that we have the gameplay out of the way, let's talk about what makes Land of Mushrooms different from its watermelon-based inspirations. I admittedly haven't played enough Suika Game to know if it also has all the features I'm about to mention, but I don't think it does. Most important of all, Land of Mushrooms has two items that you won't find in Suika Game. First is a bomb that destroys all mushrooms in a limited range, and second is a rainbow mushroom that can pair with any other mushroom it touches. Both of these items are fairly rare as far as drops go, but can be life savers when they do decide to pop up. Bombs can also mess up your plans if you place them without really thinking, as they can just as easily blow up a high level mushroom. There's also a timer that forces you to drop each mushroom in five seconds. It's very strict too, and it caused me to mess up more than once. I'm going to assume that there has to be something similar to it in Suika Game, but I don't remember that game forcing my hand as often as Land of Mushrooms does. There is also a reshuffle button, but it only has limited uses. Besides not being able to use it indefinitely, it doesn't even feel very effective gameplay-wise. Your available dropped mushrooms only come from the bottom half of the evolutionary scale, and it never seems beneficial to shuffle them around. Besides that there's the field of play itself, which I can't help but think is far too small. Once again I'm not totally sure on how it compares, but it can take just a few minutes for it to fill up. Overall, Land of Mushrooms feels like it adds a decent amount of new concepts to the Suika Game formula, but I don't think any of them are good.

I want to talk about the visuals and audio next, as I had some big issues with both. To put it bluntly, Land of Mushrooms gives off the vibe that it was created over a weekend using only the barest of assets. There's nothing truly appealing in the game, and I personally don't find smiling mushrooms cute. I realize that there isn't going to be a lot of visual variety in a puzzle game, but what we get here feels like the bare minimum. Very little animation, boring designs, and a singular background to boot. There's also the fact that mushrooms don't exactly compare well to fruits. Suika Game makes sense because we all know that watermelons are bigger than apples, and so on, but there's no rhyme or reason as to why one mushroom would be bigger than another. Also, speaking of size, the mushrooms seemed to change size randomly between being held up and being dropped, and this just felt like a bug after a while. I think you can actually buy other visual themes via DLC, but we'll get to that later. Music-wise things are even worse, as you only get one weirdly melancholic piano song for the entire game. Not only is the song out of place, but it sounds like it came from a stock music library. I'm not sure if it did, but if it didn't then the developers might as well have gone that route instead. We've all played puzzle games that have a single horrible track to them, but this one is just too much. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it alone nearly made me want to quit, and I eventually just had to mute the game after a while in order to keep playing it. It really is that bad.

My biggest problem with Land of Mushrooms has to be its pricing. It admittedly is mildly cheaper than Suika Game's asking price of $2.99 but it's not that simple. Even though Land of Mushrooms is priced at $2.69, there is about ten dollars or so of DLC available at the time of this writing. It's not just cosmetic DLC either, as much of it seems to be game modes that were cut out of the base game due to apparent greed. Not only is there an easier mode that only offers smaller mushrooms, but there's also a co-op mode too that are locked behind paywalls. You even see them blocked off on the start screen as if you can somehow unlock them in-game, but you can't. I would've much preferred if they went for a five or ten dollar price point and just included everything, but I think the developers were going for a sort of bait and switch. I'm sure no one would think a game like this would lock half its content away, but that's what you get here. If the base game were free I wouldn't mind this sort of pricing tactic at all, but the half-finished version costs nearly as much as the game they're ripping off. Seeing as you only get about a small chunk of the content for the initial price point, I don't know why anyone would play this over Suika Game. Oh, and in case you're wondering why I didn't mention multiplayer earlier, that's because it's rather uneventful. You can play a versus game with a friend, but neither of us found it all that much fun. It features that same piano track I mentioned earlier, and me and the friend who tried it out couldn't even be bothered to finish our first match due to it.

I honestly don't know what to wrap up this review. Land of Mushrooms isn't a horrible game, but there's no denying that Suika Game is a hundred times better. Land of Mushrooms not only a lesser version of that game, but it also throws in a lot of DLC and shady price too. I simply can't recommend this game at all. I guess you can grab this one if you absolutely must have mushrooms instead of fruits as playing pieces, but that's really the only reason I can think of as to why anyone would want to pick this one up. I guess you might find that "69" in the price point funny, but I suggest you don't let that sway you. Anyway, I'm done for now. See you in the next one!

Check Out Land of Mushrooms on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/land-of-mushrooms-switch/

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Story: N/A
Gameplay: B
Graphics: B
Music/Sound: D
Value: C-

Overall: C

Pros:
+ An alright puzzle game if you overlook the obvious comparisons.
+ There are leaderboards and in-game achievements for those who care for such things.
+ The additional game modes, and cosmetic changes, are good on paper.
+ The base game is fairly cheap if you want to pick it up out of curiosity.

Cons:
- This is an obvious rip off of Suika Game, and plays a bit worse than it to boot.
- The few new gameplay additions, like the bombs and rainbow pieces, feel like afterthoughts that barely affect gameplay.
- The visuals feel rather basic, and the single music track you get in the game gets annoying very quickly.
- Most of the game, like the easy and co-op modes, is locked behind DLC paywalls.
- Just pay the thirty cents more and get Suika Game!

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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