Become an omnivorous gelatinous life form in Mushroom 11 [Game of the Week]

The winners of the 2017 Google Play Awards were announced last week at Google I/O. Out of the many indie games in the Play Store, Mushroom 11, developed by independent game studio Untame, won the award for ‘Standout Indie’ game of the year.

Mushroom 11 is a 2D platformer game, but definitely far from the Mario, Metroid and Megaman platformers that the masses have become accustomed to.

The player is thrown into an apocalyptic wasteland without any story elements or controls. On your screen is what can only be explained as a green gelatinous, bacteria-looking blob, and touching the screen makes the blob move. Quickly the player learns that this green jello-looking mass is a life form, as it consumes apocalyptic fireflies, flowers and spiders.

The green gelatinous life form travels by dragging your finger along the screen, but not in a typical method. The player is actually erasing the creature on one end while the other end grows. For example, if the player drags their finger down the middle of the bacteria-like creature it splits into two. Completely erasing one of the halves will then make the other half grow back into its full size.

Controlling the creature often gets difficult because of the erasing method utilized in the game, a problem accentuated by the many mini puzzles included in the game —  but it’s even more challenging to stop playing. Mushroom 11 features simple puzzles like trying to balance a seesaw-like structure while slowly moving and making sure your green gelatinous creature doesn’t fall into a lake of lava.

Other puzzles include tricky pathways requiring the player to erase their creature from different angles, pressing multiple buttons at once necessitating the player to split their creature in two and also defeating lava-spitting flowers.

For a 2D apocalyptic wasteland, Mushroom 11 features a dreary but stunning appearance. The dismal clouds move slowly in the background, while the buildings and structures, in the fore and background, look demolished and weary. It’s evident that humans once lived in this world with the billboards and stained bricks but that’s of no consequence to the green creature. The music in Mushroom 11 reflects the atmosphere in the game, but is not as pleasing as the aesthetics.

The game offers a left-handed mode that mirrors the right-handed mode so that it’s easier to control for left-handed people. The eraser’s size on iOS devices can be changed with Force Touch, while on Android switch with the tap of the button on the left-hand corner.

Mushroom 11 is a quite enjoyable apocalyptic platformer game, that requires some thinking and a bit of patience, but deserves, in my opinion, its place as number one ‘Standout Indie’ of the year.

Untame’s Mushroom 11 can be found on the Play Store for $6.49 CAD, and $6.99 on the App store. If you can get over the price tag,  it’s completely worth buying.