Nintendo's next mobile game, Dr. Mario World, released today!

It's an interesting spin on Dr. Mario, but the premise is still the same. There are germs on the screen that you have to get rid of. You use pills that match the color of the germs to remove them. I somehow doubt the medical accuracy, but it's a fun puzzle game.

Edit: This mini review you’re about to read was written too early. Be sure you read the very end.

I played through 20 levels and it's... pretty good so far. I will keep using it as a time waster but I'm not blown away.

I have a problem with the touch controls but it's honestly partially on me. You can place the pills anywhere on the board and they'll float upwards. Since you can place them anywhere, why wait? Just put them where you want right? But you can also move them laterally or up, BUT NOT DOWN, while they're out on the board. So what keeps happening to me is, I can't properly see it under my thumb and I put it in the wrong place. About 5 times that's required a restart to even finish the level because it seems like the first few moves are often necessary to get right.

And another problem is a problem I've had with nearly every mobile game. It seems like the majority of your time playing is watching the level loading screens and the success screens because you can't tap to skip through.

A new mechanic that I'm mixed on is choosing your doctor. After a few levels you can choose between Mario, Peach, and Bowser, and each come with their own special power. Which ever one you choose, you're locked in unless you unlock the others (and also non-starter doctors) purely randomly by using the in-game currency. It's a loot box system to unlock characters, and those are always a fan favorite. But as far as I can tell, there aren't any requirements on using different ones, so this doesn't exactly screw up your gameplay but it's something to note.

BUT at its core it still has the Dr. Mario mechanics and premise, with some modern puzzle game mechanics to flesh it out, and that's still fun, usually. But I don't feel a strong drive to play a ton of it. This is a 10 minutes a day kind of game. And honestly that may be a good thing. It doesn't feel like it has the same addictive loop that games like Two Dots and such have. And with Two Dots and basically every other free-to-play cash machine, they had progression halting mechanics that you had to either wait or pay to get through to capitalize on that addictive loop. Edit: Welp. That was a nice thought anyway

So far, I haven't seen anything that could halt your progress like that, however I somewhat expect there to be some powerups that are just *barely* not required to progress. You can buy these powerups with coins you collect in game, but then you have the quandary of grinding the hell out of them or paying real money.

At any rate, this is a much kinder free-to-play model than what you may be used to with other puzzle games, and it's a fun game to fill some time here and there. Twenty levels seems like a lot but it's only a drop in the bucket for what's available, so I don't know how the game might change, but it's definitely worth downloading and trying out.

Edit: Well, they got me. I didn’t notice the heart counter. I ended up on a level in the mid-20s that was giving me some trouble and suddenly I couldn’t play without waiting 30 minutes or paying real money. This is just the same free-to-play-on-our-schedule-unless-you-pay puzzle formula with some Dr. Mario mechanics and a Mushroom Kingdom coat of paint. You may have read my posts or comments here before about this kind of mechanic: when I see a pay or wait blocker, I uninstall. So I have.

Please Nintendo, and other mobile game developers, give me an option to throw you five bucks and not have this stuff happen. I love you and I’ll keep playing Mario Run (yep, I still fire that up occasionally), but this is a big miss for me.

hardeyez wrote on 07/10/2019 at 08:10pm

One problem I had with it... their servers went down when I was playing last night and you can't play at all in that case... it actually bounced me out in the middle of a level. It must talk to the servers a lot.

Will_Ball   Game Mod   Super Member wrote on 07/12/2019 at 03:56am

I already got bored with it.

jdodson   Admin wrote on 07/12/2019 at 05:56pm

The first few levels are fun but I haven't yet played much more. So far the play style isn't too bad, I kinda miss the match four to knock out the viruses but it's a match three world on mobile.

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