Nominated by Pasq! He’s doing his own take on the backlog challenge over here.
Mushroom 11 is… I guess a platformer? You have to watch a trailer to really understand what’s going on here, but to move about you have to destroy parts of your blob in order to make other parts grow. By constantly changing its shape, your mass of disease can carry itself along the world and, with some careful manipulation of exactly what part of it grows and into which shape, climb walls and even leap between platforms.
The chief challenge is figuring out exactly what shape you need to be in order to scale the current obstacle. By taking root into a small nook in a wall, for example, you can effectively cling to it and grow around the edge of a cliff. You only need one small piece to crest the top- delete the rest of your shape and it’ll regrow at the top of the cliff ready to move on.
The problem comes with the total lack of precision available. The blob regrows randomly from any part of its mass that isn’t currently being deleted, which means it can take a while to convince it to grow in the way you want it to. When you’re fighting against the effects of gravity (or fire, or poison, or mechanical spider lookin’ dudes) this gets frustrating very quickly.
Fin or Bin:
It’s a shame because it’s SUCH a cool concept and I’ve genuinely never played anything like this before, but a cool concept doesn’t automatically mean a fun game and the cutting-off point for me was a puzzle that wanted me to turn a small bolt to open a door. It was like trying to repair glasses while wearing greased boxing gloves. I 100% recommend giving the game a bash if the concept seems cool to you because it’s certainly realised well, but for me it’s a Bin.