Fight off the vicious Shrooms in Mushroom Crusher Extreme, some thoughts now it's out

Mushroom Crusher Extreme, a retro-styled action game that sees you fight off vicious Shrooms using various spells has left Early Access. A bit of an odd setting but certainly not the weirdest game I've played.

Note: Key provided by the developer.

For starters, our contributor BTRE took a look at the game some time ago back in 2016. I don't want to repeat much of what he said, but a brief overview is that you move your Wizard character across isometric tiles, while tapping a few buttons to unleash your various powers. It has a huge amount of retro charm in the visuals, I think they did a nice job there but it's let down by the gameplay.

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I will agree with what BTRE said about the clunky controls, I was constantly going in the wrong direction due to the viewpoint. Due to this, I found Mushroom Crusher Extreme quite frustrating to play. Another problem with the controls, is that unless you hold down a direction they're not very responsive, but you don't want to hold down the direction constantly as enemies move and jump and hurt you if you touch them.

Feature Highlight:

• Survive the onslaught and BATTLE more than 15 types of vicious Shrooms
• COMBO your arsenal of elemental spells and MATCH them against enemy weaknesses to fight your way to victory.
• Collect spores and redeem rewards. Hard-won accomplishments UNLOCK more spells, levels and goodies for your ever-expanding inventory
• EQUIP different combinations of Spells and status-enhancing Trinkets to customize Zenon’s powers
• Summon the help of a friend in ONLINE or LOCAL CO-OP MODE
• EXPLORE beautiful, handcrafted levels and rid the world of Shrooms once and for all!

I feel like I'm really just repeating BTRE's thought here, the game isn't exactly exciting and it's quite repetitive. You can replay some of it to get a better score, some upgrades and so on but when the main gameplay doesn't pull you in—what's the point?

It could have been fun and interesting, if the controls were better (which sucks away some of the fun) and the enemies were more threatening. It was in Early Access for well over two years, I don't really get how they weren't able to make the controls both responsive and intuitive in that time. Shame, it had a fun idea but the poor controls and overly repetitive nature of the game just didn't allow me to enjoy it.

You can find Mushroom Crusher Extreme on Steam.