EIEIO 08: Mushroom Men: trash vs. rabbits

I was thrilled to watch a gameplay demo of Red Fly Studio's Mushroom Men at EIEIO. The concept art for this game is gorgeous enough to sell the game all on its own. The company agreed, evidently, as their stage area was decorated with huge, striking prints of the art on canvas.

Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars is the story of mushrooms made sentient by some kind of green dust left by a comet. These mushrooms then break off into tribes and start fighting each other. The DS prequel, Rise of the Fungi, tells of one tribe's conflict with some annoying insects, but The Spore Wars deals directly with the fighting between the Amanitas and the Morels. The mushrooms also have to contend with the other newly aware, mutated creatures that have emerged. In the demo level shown, these included kudzu and rabbits.

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The kudzu -- a sort of collective consciousness at this point -- ask the mushrooms to help them get rid of their rabbit problem. The rabbits are mutated, covered with spines, and about five times the size of the player's mushroom character Pax, which means that you have to get creative in order to exterminate them. Pax has the power of telekinesis (a Spore Power in the game) that allows him to manipulate objects and set up chain reactions. For example, you can move a fan down onto a rabbit, with predictably fatal (offscreen) results. The camera jumps to something else during the rabbit death scenes in order to maintain the game's E10 rating. Think very hard about what you're saying if you're starting to type an angry comment about the censorship of cartoon rabbit death in Mushroom Men.

For hand-to-hand combat, Pax uses an assortment of stuff found lying about, which can be combined into various weapons. Throughout most of the demo, Pax was armed with a bludgeoning weapon made from a DS stylus with a thimble stuck to the end. There are around 40 unique combinations that range from flamethrowers to blades. These weapons will be used not only for fighting, but for some environmental interaction -- for example, using fire to melt ice in order to access items.

Pax also has one of those sticky, extending rubber hand toys, which he can use as a grappling hook. In almost every case, adding grappling imbues a game with extra win. He also has the ability to glide, using his mushroom cap as a parachute. These two abilities make it quite easy for Pax to navigate the vertical space in the levels.