MFGG - Mario Fan Games Galaxy

Review Information

Game Reviewed	Mallow Maze 2 - Switch It Up, by mtbottlepro
Review Author	Cap'n Coconuts
Created	Sep 16 2015, 3:48 AM

General Commentary and Game Overview

So recently, a game known as Mario Tails was put up on the mainsite. It's a Flappy Bird clone and didn't really impress me. Jack-of-All-Games insists that it was worse than this game, so I decided to check this out. After playing it, I'm fairly sure he was wrong.

Mallow Maze 2 is exceedingly simple. All you have to do is collect the Power Star at the end of the maze. Although there are some obstacles to be dealt with, these barely add anything of value to this game--if at all.

Pros	+ It's... uh... sorry, but I can't come up with a pro that isn't sarcasm or faint praise.
Cons	- Mazes are far too simplistic and dull, relying on key and lock puzzles to keep the game remotely challenging. - Movement control is poor. - Mallow's a cloud. Apparently the creator was too lazy to sprite him. - No sound effects.

Impressions

Gameplay 2 / 10	Mallow has found himself in a series of incredibly dull mazes. How he's managed to get there is unknown. Perhaps this is purgatory in the afterlife, or perhaps it is a prison designed to bore him to death. All mtbottlepro has said regarding this matter is that it takes place in the underground worlds of the Mushroom Kingdom. The first level isn't even a maze at all, as there are no dead ends. The next few levels introduce the ? block which makes bricks disappear, though the mazes still fail to be very good mazes. About halfway through the game, a second Mallow, blue in color, appears out of nowhere. He is controlled in the same way as Mallow--poorly, with the arrow keys. This feature seems utterly without purpose. Without this feature shoehorned in with forced separation or Power Stars turning blue (requiring Blue Mallow to touch them), Mallow could finish the game by himself. Puzzles never progress much further beyond the simple key and lock puzzle (with ? blocks being keys, and bricks being the lock for some reason). The only enemy is a gray angry cloud which stays completely still and is destroyed by an object in the maze, making this one enemy a glorified key and lock as well. Even with two Mallows to keep track of, these evil clouds are a non-issue. Mallow seems unable to change direction in any smooth manner, probably because movement was poorly programmed. This awkward movement makes the game less fun than it already was, which is an achievement in itself because the game was hardly fun at all.
Graphics 2 / 10	Mallow Maze really blew the special effects budget here. There's just about nothing but 8-bit graphics ripped from Super Mario Bros., and Mallow himself is represented as a mere cloud. Can't put much more effort into graphics than that! But hey, at least they aren't poorly stretched or resized or anything.
Sound 2 / 10	There are no sound effects. There's only one background theme in the entire game, and during my playthrough it ended with a couple levels to spare and never started playing again. Given that and the relative simplicity of the game, the background music may simply have been one big file which the author assumed would not need to loop. I don't know where this music came from, and I'm not sure it even fits the game. That said, if it happens to be an original composition, it may be the only thing in the game that had meaningful effort put into it.
Replay 1 / 10	The game provides zero incentive to play it again, and it's bad to start with. Why would you want to replay it?

Final Words

What is this, a prison designed to bore Mallow to death? What did he ever do to you?

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Comments

	Ryan Silberman Sep 25 2015, 4:17 AM
I guess I was stretching it a bit, but I felt like this wasn't a blatant copy of some crappy game (even if it is crappy itself) and it ends quickly, so the pain is over before anyone would know it. But then again, I could simply be talking out of my mind.....Who knows....Not even I do at this point. I'll just step away from this Mario Tails nonsense once and for all.

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