Mind over Mushroom is an RTS game. It has a simple premise, a simple style, and simple gameplay. It is an indie game which has not tried to build itself above its means. And it works so well because of it.
I’ve played too many indie games which have tried to build the next ultimate storytelling experience and the scale of the project is too much for them. But with a sensible goal Mind over Mushroom manages to be super fun despite being super simple.
In the small kingdom this game resides in, an archaeological team accidentally discovers and subsequently unleashes strange mushrooms upon the kingdom. This causes an infection in the local populace, who begin to be controlled by the mushrooms leaving you and the other uninfected to defeat them and end the mushroom menace.
Now each area has several small battles to take on. Each battle is a simple RTS style: You lay down your troops from a small pool of options and you move and defeat your enemies over the turns. There is nothing inherently special within the RTS controls but manages to work well by sticking to a solid formula. Characters have ample movement and several different attacks to dish out, some with negatives to your characters as well.
That is the essential sum of gameplay. Over time you gain more characters and more battles to work your way through the mushroom horde. The game does not evolve much further but it really does not need to, as you have a sensible amount of actions to do already.
This game manages to hit the right amount of content off the block. The troops are unique enough, with the melee characters being maybe a bit too similar but possessing enough unique moves to allow you to decide between them: Fighters are purely offensive whereas Guards have more debuffing moves to slow your opponent and defend yourselves. The one gripe is that targeting with characters is not perfectly precise, and multiple times I accidentally hit one of my characters as we surrounded an opponent to hammer him into pieces.
Graphically the game is nothing special: The game aims for a low poly style across the board, with enough depth to allow you to discern objects but no more detail than ever needed. It is the perfect style for this game, combined with simple soothing music which while not portraying the magnitude of your situation does a good job at filling in the spaces.
There really is not much which can be said about this game other than saying it works really well. Mind over Mushroom is a game which has not tried to outsize its team, and as such it’s a small and stylish RTS experience with a good amount of fun. If you want a nice simple game to fill some space I would definitely direct you towards this. It’s not trying to be special and that makes it really good.
You can grab Mind over mushroom on Steam here
Mind over Mushroom is Published and Developed by Binary Jellyfish
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