Boing! Docomodake

Besides the fact that the cover of this game just says “BUY ME! I’M A MUSHROOM GAME!!” this game is appealing because it is actually based on a Japanese telecommunications mascot and really just popped up out of no where. A cute game where you play as a mushroom that was based on a mobile phone mascot? How can you go wrong? And really with this game, you can’t.

The game is a lot of fun, the graphics, gameplay, music, storyline and pretty much everything about the game draw you in, whether a game about a mushroom phone mascot makes sense or not becomes irrelevant before you even pick up the game.

Boing! Docomodake is based in a forest called the Docomodake forest and the storyline is that you’re a character called Papa Docomodake and you’re traveling through the forest searching for your lost family. The story-line in general isn’t that exciting but as this is a puzzle game it’s more the gameplay that you play for, not the story-line. 

The worlds have story-lines for each Docomodake you save, the Grandma floats down a river while she’s upside down.. Grandpa Docomodake rolls down a hill. Very basic story-lines with not much relevance to anything but still very unique ideas which is the main point of this game.

Level set up and gameplay are a lot like Mario vs Donkey Kong, you start in one place and the exit is in another place and you need to make it through the level collecting coins as you go, the levels are like platform based mazes with switches which block and open certain passage ways and other mechanisms which you unlock later in the game and need to discover how to use to get through the maze.

The gameplay itself is extremely unique and has many possibilities. Even the controls are different to most games – A little hard to get used to at first. The arrow keys and the ABXY pad both do the same things to make the game easy for left or right handers. Up arrow jumps, down arrow squats and left and right move left and right. Basic stuff, the other hand holds the stylus. 

The main gameplay comes from the actual character you play as more so than the switches in the level like Mario vs Donkey Kong has. Dragging the stylus across your character will break a piece of your mushroomy body away and that piece will become a new, tinier mushroom and you will shrink also. You start with 5 of these mini mushrooms and as you get further in the game you unlock more which makes you bigger, although you never really get much bigger than your original size. 

The mini mushrooms you drag off yourself can not be controlled with the arrow keys – They’re more like living blocks. You can stack them and jump on to of them or climb them, you can throw them at enemies and switches which are too high to reach, you can through them at certain types of blocks and break the blocks and you can even drag them into areas marked out for blocks and use them as actual blocks!

When you’re done with them you can drag them back into your own body or make them follow you by setting them down on the ground and walking through them. The puzzles are based on using these mini Docomodakes for different purposes, ladders, blocks, weapons, etc. There is many possibilities for what you can do so the game is exciting all the way through. 

This gameplay style can be tedious at times, dragging mini Docomodakes around one by one to get them where you need them is a little annoying, but it doesn’t ruin the experience of the game much, it’s still just as fun.

The graphics aren’t great, it’s a 2D platform game with graphics no more advanced than a good GBA game but yet again, this is the kind of game you play for game play not anything else, 3D graphics wouldn’t work for this game and it’s hard to make 2D graphics without them looking similar to GBA graphics, and to be fair, this games graphics would be considered good on the GBA. 

Overall, this game is an odd title to see on the DS given that a Docomodake is a mascot for a Japanese cell phone company, particularly odd to be translated to English, but that’s something which adds to the experience of buying this game. It’s a fairly short game, there is 56 levels in total and an experienced gamer can finish it in 4 to 5 hours but it’s cheap which makes up for that fact and I was never bored while playing it through. 

If you see it in a gaming store I really recommend purchasing it. It’s cheap, simple and extremely fun. It makes use of every button on the console, even though some buttons do the same thing as others, and it uses the touch screen in a very different way to other games, so although it’s a very simple game it makes use of everything that it has at it’s disposal.. Well excluding the microphone.. But it is certainly worth purchasing..

It’s been translated to English for reasons which I have no idea but for that reason alone it is worth purchasing just for the experience… It just has that Japanese charm to it and it’s a mushroom game. If anymore are released, I’ll be buying them so I recommend that you also check out this game.