The Switch has been a bit of a sales sensation, leading to an inevitable glut of eShop releases ahead of Christmas. But while increased third-party support is never to be sniffed at, games like MUJO help no-one.
If you've been following smartphone games over the past several years, MUJO may well feel familiar to you; it was released onto iOS and Android in late 2014 to generally favourable reviews. The original was a very approachable and polished match-three puzzler with a cute Greek myth twist. You're getting the same basic experience here.
MUJO is all about gathering together clumps of coloured blocks in a grid and touching the screen or pressing a button to make them disappear. Each colour feeds into a tussle that's occurring between your trio of Greek gods and their rivals (think the Minotaur and Medusa). Red blocks initiate attacks, while the other colours help empower your Gods.
Before long you'll encounter foes with thousands of hit points who need to be felled in just one or two almighty attacks. This is where your ability to gather together multiple red blocks into one high-value unit comes into play. By doing so, and then matching those souped-up blocks in kind, you can lay the smackdown on your opponent.
Stirring things up are the occasional boss character, often with a strict move limit, as well as bombs that threaten to wipe out your level-1,000 attack block. You'll also encounter chests that, once matched or destroyed, grant you a random new Greek God to add to your roster. Each God has their own special abilities, such as being able to rearrange the grid or safely remove bombs, and you're free to swap individual members out to put together the ideal team.
So far, so decent. What's the problem here? We've already mentioned the most glaring issue: MUJO on Switch is the same as MUJO the mobile game. As in, exactly the same.
The developer has essentially ported this three-year-old mobile title onto Nintendo's console with no thought of optimisation or enhancements. The game retains its portrait perspective on the landscape Switch display, leaving ugly great borders to the left and right side.
You can press Y to zoom into the grid, but this feels like a fudge. Would it really have been so hard to shift the Gods and the rest of the UI elements to the sides?
Meanwhile the game's touch-driven controls have been mapped scruffily to the Joy-Con buttons. Selecting blocks in the grid with the left stick isn't so bad, but needing to scroll right down to use your God powers seems poorly thought through, as does needing to press two different buttons to activate a special ability.
You can use the Switch's touchscreen more directly in handheld mode, but thanks to that un-optimised view it's all too small and pokey to be truly effective.
All this is bad enough, and you'd probably stop at 'incredibly lazy' if that was the extent of MUJO's crimes. Slapping a notable price tag on this completely un-enhanced game is tougher to swallow, while keeping the original free-to-play game's energy system and related in-app purchases in place seems downright cynical.
There's an energy system at play here that sees you 'spending' lightning bolts to remove bothersome individual blocks and shortcut the whole God-collecting mechanic. After a while you may find that you run out of these bolts, leaving you with a choice of waiting for the daily replenishment or paying real money.
Such a system arguably has a place in a free-to-play mobile game. We struggle to see how it has a place in a paid Nintendo Switch game - even a budget one.
It's true that you don't have to spend money to play MUJO. But the very fact that this legacy system remains in place is indicative of the lack of thought and effort that's been put into this port.
Conclusion
MUJO is a decent casual puzzler with a pleasant aesthetic, but the total lack of effort made to bring the game in line with its new platform is deeply disappointing. The game's poorly optimised user interface and ill-fitting legacy in-app purchase system smack of a rush job.
We've got no problem with developers bringing mobile games across to Switch. This is a portable system that's built on mobile technology, and there are plenty of top mobile games out there that would make for a good fit with just a little effort. MUJO, however, is a deeply lazy and cynical port.
Comments 35
I was hoping for something more vicious, but I'll take it. A 4 here is still like a -2 elsewhere.
Absolutely agree, putting F2P elements into a paid game isn’t going to fly on Switch (I hope).
Levels+ is a really good example of how this kind of game can be designed properly for Nintendo’s console.
Great, now the one person considering buying this now knows not to. Seriously, there are better games you guys could be reviewing. By better, I mean games people are actually undecided on.
Nintendo dropped the ball allowing this on the eShop. Microtransactions are a glaring wart on the industry right now and the switch was basically a safe haven from that nonsense. Hopefully this game isn't a sign that the floodgates have opened to any crummy developer who is looking to make a quick buck.
There is no point reviewing these games that are on the iPhone before games that aren’t.
@BravelyDavid Nintendo and other digital platforms owners don't care about quality so long as the game isn't broken. They get a license fee and profit from units sold. The dev loses as a poor game won't recoup the cost of investment.
While I hate lazy crap, Nintendo, MS, and Sony shouldn't be held accountable for crap games they don't directly produce.
8,99€ for MUJO the game + 179,28€ for the DLC = 188,27€ for the complete game. Then it will start you off with a total of 1965 Extra Lightnings to waste.
Looks like a student project. And I doubt it got a passing grade there, either. Yech!
@Pablo17 of course it should be reviewed! Lmao people need to be warned about games like this, by your logic you would be letting people spend hard earned money on crap!
Nah !
Shovelware.
4 is too high a praise for this piece of doo-doo.
@BravelyDavid Oink Games was found by ex-skip employees, a company that worked on a lot of DS and Wii games for Nintendo.
@Deathwalka might want to actually read what I wrote. Also, no one was going to rush out and buy this game, except maybe you?
@Octane Sad when you think about how these guys probably worked on Chibi Robo. Talk about how the mighty have fallen.
The movement of a free to pay mobile with next to no optimisation to a console to be sold at a premium price (for what it is) with no removal or amendment of the microtransactions to balance out the fact you have to for the game is nothing short of shameless.
Without any doubt I can honestly say that this game has no reason to exist on the eShop. It brings nothing, it offers nothing, it represents only the worst aspects of the industry. Its as if literally they kept any porting costs to a minumum so they only have to con the minimum number of people to buy it to turn a profit.
@Pablo17 no I read your verbal diarrhoea lol
Don't backtrack, your point is DONT write reviews on these mobile games...yet there are many people who have not played or even heard of this game, and they come to sites like these to see whether it's worth spending there hard earned money.
So yeah your 2-bit lack of understanding on why people shouldn't review these games is laughable.
Look don't cry about it you have your opinion I have mine, it's just that mine is trying to educate you
@Deathwalka I can’t take you serious when you are clearly unable to read. Finish school and then come find me. Silly Kid.
Edit: Had to put you on ignore, I don’t have time to baby sit you.
@Pablo17 haha I'm glad my posts hit a truth!
4 seems like a ridiculously high score. Maybe on a phone it might get that rating. But on a gaming machine, with zero effort in porting, it’s plain crazy. Rate it as the pointless bit of shovelware it is ... zero
A score of 4 is totally underserved. It should be a rotund 0
How did this game get on eShop? Nintendo needs to step up the quality control/curation.
I don't get it, does Nintendo not even have basic quality control now? That vertical aspect ratio should've resulted in an instant refusal.
@Pablo17 I had zero knowledge about this game and no idea if it was something worth buying or complete trash. Exactly the type of game that needs a review or two the most, I reckon. The bigger releases that everyone's talking about and whatever are usually much easier to get a gauge on whether they're worth buying or not without reviews. If you want to be the authority on which games get reviewed in which order, go make your own website.
Sure...with all the games getting released each week, people were going to buy Mujo. I don’t think so.
I really hope this doesn't become a trend. I don't want to see the Switch's wonderful eshop tainted by hordes of cheap mobile conversions.
but is it worse than nba?
Is the screen orientation improved when the Switch itself is rotated? I'm asking before I plonk down AU$300 on this.
This game raises serious questions for the future of the e-shop and I think it was well thought through for nintendolife to bring these issues up in the form of a review and not just a rant editorial piece as we have seen else where.
Nintendo plz remove this mobile game off your eshop!
the devs were too lazy to adopt the game to the switch - instead of f2p it's pay up front plus micro transactions. horrid.
The screen on this game is formatted as ridiculously as Tumblestone. That being said, games like this hugely emphasize why I love having an iPad mini. The screen is bigger than the switch, and there's a TON of free games on the AppStore, many of which they are putting on the switch and having the audacity to charge high prices for. Mujo, Tumblestone, Sparkle 2, Piczle Lines, etc are all free on the AppStore... and you know what? A good iPad mini costs about the same as a Switch. 😉
@Pablo17 you still spitting that nonsense, do you even read the other comments? Do you know what an idiot you sound like? Having an opinion is fine, but when your opinion has flaws in its logic, and when your opinion only has a negative impact......guess what no one wants to know.
Just seeing those screenshots tells me that it's a mobile game...
I've tried this game on the Mobile store and boy it sucks. It basically a game where you don't have anything to do and you're wasting time but honestly? Just go to a local shop and buy a crossword puzzle book and you'll have more fun with that than this game.
Pray for Mujo
There are some basic qualifications this game should have needed to meet before it could be included on the eShop, and it didn't. Some people might like the microtransactions, fine. But failing to actually build their game to fit the aspect ratio of the hardware is just irresponsible and lazy.
I agree that this game should be removed from the shop. Its presence is the ultimate bad apple ruining the bunch and will do nothing to encourage people to gamble on digital games. A lot of buyers don't read game reviews, and the developers don't deserve one dime for this lazy port.
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