I was pretty excited to try Dr Mario World, Nintendo’s mobile entry in the Dr Mario franchise, even tho the core mechanics were pretty different from the usual game. I really tried getting into it, but ultimately couldn’t, I found it to be a really bad free to play game with gameplay that didn’t make sense at all for me. I lost enough times on early levels that I ran out of stamina and had to stop playing almost immediately. Still, it’s a cute little Dr Mario themed product if you can get into it and they clearly put some effort into interesting character design.
You start the game with a cute introduction of viruses causing chaos in the mushroom kingdom, then you’re thrown into the game’s tutorial; The basic way to destroy viruses is to throw pills upwards (instead of the usual downward motion of Dr Mario games), you can move them left to right while they’re dropping down, but you can’t reverse their direction at all, so you better be precise. I had some issues with the way this game played and found it mostly frustrating with the free-floating style where you could drag pills around. I wish the movement had been in blocks like other Dr Mario games. When you match three things of the same color with a pill, they are destroyed, which means destroying blocks is paramount to clearing stages. When you make enough matches you get rainbow capsules that match with any color.
The game has a weird score mechanic that you need to reach in order to collect all stars for a level but you also have a limited number of capsules that you can use before you lose. I feel that the game isn’t thought of as a puzzle game but rather some light random experience where victory and defeat aren’t predetermined by the design. I went through harder stages wondering if each stage has a ‘correct’ solution, if the pills are preset and will always be the same or if you get random capsules that you need to make do with. The ‘predetermined puzzle’ hypothesis really falls apart if you consider special powers that destroy random lines in the screen or if you take into account microtransactions that allow you to buy more capsules or skill uses.
I just wanted a neat mobile Dr Mario game and play as Dr Waluigi, but I got hit with quests and stamina systems - and not being able to play the game because it couldn’t connect to some server online - when I was actually playing it, it felt random, frustrating and not at all what I wanted. Oh well!
