This late in the Wii U's lifecycle the low expectations for good Nintendo Web Framework games are becoming the norm. Where we were once shocked at the poor quality of a number of these low-budget indie titles, we now roll our eyes and shrug. But when a title is hyped by its developer as its pièce de résistance, the end result had better be good and worth the wait. So SUPER ROBO MOUSE, long touted as the apex of RCMADIAX's Wii U output, had a bit more to live up to than the developer's other titles. Unfortunately it's a messy, cheap, frustrating experience that fails to meet its billing.
In Super Robo Mouse you play as a robotic mouse and have to collect pieces of cheese around mazes in order to open the exit to another level. The mazes are filled with traps and hazards, like spinning blades and turrets. The mouse dies from one hit and has to start over from the beginning; that's fine in theory. We love challenging games like Super Meat Boy, for example, which bases its gameplay around frequent deaths and restarts; yet the mazes in SUPER ROBO MOUSE are too large and too full of cheap deathtraps. Using the joystick to move the mouse makes for imprecise, floaty controls, while dying also means losing any cheese collected; with no checkpoint system this gets tedious (and frequently rage-inducing) rather quickly.
In terms of content there are three worlds here, though the variations feel primarily like palette swaps. There are enough stages to justify the price tag, certainly, but the design and gameplay issues mean that getting to the end isn't necessarily enjoyable or worthwhile.
The presentation of SUPER ROBO MOUSE is about on par with the quality of the gameplay. There's one looping song and no sound effects, which are important in a game like this as they can help the player learn the patterns of the various traps. The GamePad is used for menus and a cheese counter and nothing else - there's no off-TV play, which is unbelievable for an experience that feels like it belongs on a smartphone.
The visuals are all variations on a bland tile-set, while the titular mouse has no personality. Astonishingly, we experienced slowdown throughout our playthrough; these basic graphics should be better optimised. The slowdown certainly doesn't help when you're trying to avoid getting killed by a spinning buzzsaw.
Conclusion
Super Robo Mouse doesn't deliver the goods. There are other challenging, twitchy action titles on the Wii U eShop that provide a stronger presentation and are more fun to play. Save yourself a broken window and lost controller and spend your money on something else.
Comments 34
It's funny because RCMADIAX was hyping this up as one of his better games.
Literally...the ONE thing preventing me from downloading this is the lack of sound effects. I just can't get past that fact.
@bezerker99 Yeah, the sound effects ruin it for me. How hard could it be to add sound effects? I'm not entirely aware what engine he uses to create his games (isn't it like HTML5 or something), but it mustn't be too hard, surely?
Save yourself a broken window and lost controller and spend your money on something else. lol
@ Lee Meyer
will you be returning the provided review copy back to RCMADIAX.
Crazy that his self deemed "better effort" scores a 3 and something as simple and stupid as Skeasy gets a 5.
Even if this got a 10/10 RCMADIAX has already stated that it didn't sell and that he's going back to the bottom of the bin, so it would be irrelevant. I'm sure the slot machine game will be a major hit.
He's found his calling.
@buildz I think it's Construct2 isn't it? I've developed a few games in that before and it's very easy to add sound effects...
@Spin you are right
Too bad.....I thought this had a chance to be fun but I've heard too many issues about it to purchase it as it currently is.
@Spin @MISTAH-JOSH I've also used Construct 2, thinking about it. It takes like 20 seconds. This just makes RCMADIAX look worse!
GOTY of the Year for sure :>
Lol
@A01 Both Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars and Mini Mario & Friends: amiibo Challenge were also made on the Nintendo Web Framework. It can produce excellent games when people put effort in.
"Astonishingly, we experienced slowdown throughout our playthrough; these basic graphics should be better optimised."
It's not just the graphics that cause slowdown in games, it's the shoddy overall programming. When people see games performing badly they really should think beyond just the graphics.
Quality over quantity. One really good game is all it takes to put a dev on the map, and earn a following. The more games like this, the less likely people will buy that good game when (if) it finally releases.
It doesn't surprise me these games are trash. I know it's hard to design a good game but wow, I'm not sure I would continue my career if I consistently released poor quality products with no sign of getting better.
Then, you have Radio Free Nintendo with some developer on there shilling this game big time in the New Business segment even though they are well aware of the dev's track record.
@JaxonH
Agreed, but he's already implied that he's never going to really "try" again. The slot machine game releases this summer, I'm sure the NL staff can't wait.
Figures. This stuff would be better off on iPhone.
Isn't that just great for brand loyalty? Some of the best games ever made were produced by teams of 5-6 people or less. He's obviously not talented enough to produce his own graphics (nor am I as the games I used to make at age of around 13 or so look very similar to this calibre of rubbish), so hiring an artist and composer can go a long way to make these simplistic games more appealling/playable.
But please, don't let us stand in the way of your complacency.
..but?..it has "Super" in the name!...oh well, back to the Mouse pad...
RCMADIX needs to stop polluting the eshop with garbage. Pretty much every game of his I see I immediately think "this looks like no effort generic piece of garbage"
He clearly does not have the money, talent or drive to make quality products. The best he can achieve is "passable for a bargain bin price" and often times completely misses the mark.
If the gameplay was stellar I could easily forgive the shortcomings in graphics and somewhat in music.
I feel like he either doesn't care about quality or simply doesn't have the talent and drive to do anything above "cheap iPhone app" level of quality, He should find a new career that suits him better.
To add to this I feel like the extreme quantity of games he puts out destroys any chance of his games being good. This is what the twentieth game he has put on eshop with his one man team? How can such a fast output with a single person produce any sort of thoughtful, polished content?
His business model disgusts me and I feel bad for anyone who buys his games. If you see this RCMAXDIX please rethink your business model or choice of career.
anyone else tired of 1 developer games for 1999 year which just dont appeal today
HA HA HA HA. I just knew it. He should be kicked from developing. It's a disgrace.
That this would be worth it was just another one of his lies and empty promises. He should be a politician instead.
He really shouldn't ever release another console game, they are all turds...every single one of them.
I'm probably one of the biggest RCMADIAX defenders and apologists out there, defending his right to make these games. I even like some of them quite a bit. Blok Drop U was good, and I like Poker Dice Solitaire Future - I especially love that name The dice throwing game is oddly entertaining for short bursts and I kinda found the paint splashing game somewhat addictive.
I've bought all of his games that have been released in Europe (I've bought over 100 eShop games - I try to give a fair chance to the indie games, good and bad). Sometimes I buy these games to enjoy them, sometimes I buy the bad games to giggle a little.
That said, this game was a disappointment even for me. It feels unfinished, mainly because there is an absolute lack of IMPACT whenever the player makes a mistake. Sometimes it feels like the mouse doesn't even touch the enemies when you suddenly start from the beginning again. In collision there's not a sound to show something happened. The mouse doesn't "die" in any way. There is no animation to show something has happened. The mouse just instantly teleports back to the beginning and sometimes you weren't even able to notice the collision to happen.
In a game like this it is absolutely crucial to let the player know when a life is lost and how it happened. Just show the mouse to break, go upside down or have an electric shock or anything else.
Oh well, even if this was a disappointment, I just bought his Tap Tap Arcade Haven't tried it yet.
Wow, ha ha. This made my day! So much self-hype from the dev and this is how it's received! You know, one of the levels I made in Super Mario Maker took me six in-game hours to make, but in terms of raw time, I made it in the period of about four days.
Perhaps my four days of raw time is RCMADIAX's equivalent of two years! And change my six hours to six minutes. Pathetic. I'm glad I've never bought any of his games and I enjoy supporting indies (who deserve it).
Damn, he's like the M. Night Shamaylan of gaming, except none of his are classics. He's had one good game, two very okay games, and a good number of stinkers.
Wow. Just wow 😂😂😂
You know what game was actually really simple and fun? The shameless Adventures of Lolo ripoff, Mouse House for Wiiware. I mean, that's okay - not like HAL Laboratories is gonna bring back at "Eggerland"... ever, so go ahead and rip it off! Big John Games made a fantastic little puzzle-y throwback title that tapped into the same kind of addictive play as Lolo and Mole Mania.
I guess because this was also about a mouse, and it sort of resembled it on a base level due to the top down camera, I was hoping this would be surprisingly fun despite being simple as well. But it's clear that the guys and gals at Big John are several magnitudes more skilled than RC Madiax.
I wish Big John would make a Mouse House 2...
@MoonKnight7
His calling has always been to reduce indie gaming to empty shovelware. He managed to help ruin the eShop good and early. Nintendo's free-for-all "you buy a dev kit, you make a game" attitude didn't help things.
@Pikachupwnage
I caught this before and showed exactly what he does, which is to follow tutorials from the Construct2 website (or elsewhere), and then to charge people money for them.
Construct2 can be downloaded for free by anyone here, and they, too, can, in a week, be as "good" a developer as Rcmadiax. The most obvious was his Flappy Birds clone, which has a tutorial on the Construct2 website literally titled "Make a Flappy Bird Clone in 10 minutes."
@Quorthon
Haha. My comment is in reference to when I briefly talked with RCMADIAX about this game. If you're not busy, you can look through the comments here:
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/04/rcmadiax_has_three_new_wii_u_eshop_titles_on_the_way
Before we knew that Robo Mouse was awful (this posted before we saw the review here), he bragged it up saying that he really "tried" to make something memorable, and wanted to stop making "shovelware." While I believe he actually did "try" this time, it's very apparent that making games is not a profession he should pursue any longer. He's either really, really bad at making games, or is a con artist taking advantage of this cheap game fad we're going through right now. I guess it's a bit of both actually.
The best part is, after making so many crap games all this time, he actually tried to make something more polished, and it failed miserably on the eshop, so he says. He has stayed at the bottom of the barrel for so long, that it's impossible for him to climb out even if he wants to. His failure is his own doing, which is what I tried to tell him in that link above. He obviously doesn't care anymore.
Though, after two years of making Robo Mouse, and this is what we get... Well, yeah, I think he should just give up and pursue another career. NL shouldn't even bother talking about him anymore. He doesn't deserve the press and attention he gets anymore.
Like many other RCMADIAX games, this one had potential, maybe more than others! To be perfectly honest, I was more optimistic about this game. Eh, but if it's a bad game, then it's a bad game.
Tap here to load 34 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...