Review Information
Game Reviewed Boo Mansion Demo, by Mario350
Review Author Cap'n Coconuts
Created Feb 23 2013, 2:59 AM

General Commentary and Game Overview
Boo Mansion is a game made Mario350. The game is intended to be of the puzzle genre, but strangely I don't feel very puzzled.

The plot, or what little we know of it, goes like this: A boo stumbles into a haunted mansion, and your job is to guide him out. Now I could understand this if Mario or some other character got lost in a mansion, but this is Boo, and places like this are his natural habitat. Furthermore, the demo has only one ghost in the mansion, and that ghost is the Boo you control. Unless the hyperactive piranha plants all over the place are ghosts. That might explain why they're all hovering in midair.

Anyway, somehow this Boo gets lost in this piranha plant mansion, and you have to find the key in every stage to unlock the door until the game crashes because there's no "end of demo" room.

Come to think of it, I actually am puzzled... but not for the right reasons.
 
Pros + It's being done from scratch.
 
Cons - No title screen
- The game's plot doesn't make sense
- Wonky controls
- The "puzzles" require zero brain power
 
Impressions
Gameplay
1 / 10
The controls are pretty wonky. If you let go of one arrow key, Boo just sits there even if you were holding another arrow key.

There are no actual puzzles in this puzzle game. I understand this is a demo, but a demo for a puzzle game should have actual puzzles, and all the levels are too straightforward for me to really call them puzzles. I should have to think to solve a puzzle. This game hardly makes me think at all. When I do think, I think "this game is not very good."

The only things to avoid are piranha plants. But given that Boos in the official platforming games are immune to most means of attack that the Mario Bros. have, how in the world is a ghost vulnerable to a plant?

This game doesn't make any sense.
 
Graphics
4 / 10
The sprites clash a bit (SMW Boo with SMW2 piranha plants, for example) and everything that has an automated animation is really hyperactive. Just look at the inexplicable ghost-eating piranha plants and see what I mean.

Speaking of which, shouldn't they be planted in the ground somewhere? Why aren't they?
 
Sound
4 / 10
There's no music to speak of, and only a few sound effects. Still, it's better than the constant voice clip annoyance in Super Mario Bros. Super Quest.
 
Replay
1 / 10
Puzzle games generally aren't great in this department because you already know how to solve all the puzzles should you play it again. This demo's "puzzles" aren't that challenging to start with, and the game's poor quality discourages me from bothering to play it again.
 
Final Words
3 / 10
This game has me puzzled, but for the wrong reasons.

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