Review: Mushroom Wars

Mushrooms Wars is a relatively old game already. It started life back in 2009 on PS3 and then moved to tablets and finally on to Steam Greenlight before becoming a full PC game.

In that respect, it mirrors the gameplay; small houses with growing numbers of mushroom people, spreading out to take over lots of other bases until the map has been taken over or the objective fulfilled.

If the objective for this game was to create a fun and simple little RTS then it’s certainly succeeded on PC.  Far easier to control than the PS3 version and on a par with the iOS version thanks to responsive mouse controls, the PC version of Mushroom Wars might seem a little old fashioned in its approach to realtime strategy games but that works in its favour when it comes to setting up an online game.

The idea behind the game is easy enough to grasp.  As a certain colour group of mushroom people, your task is to take over the other colours on the map by changing the colour of the houses and bases.  Each building has a certain number of enemies inside or, in the case of the neutral ones, a certain number of mushroom people need to take it over.  Once taken, the number of people in the building will start to grow.

Add in the enemy forces trying to do the same to your buildings and you have a frantic battle of time and resources on your hands.  Your buildings can also be upgraded, which adds the ability to hold more people in them but also reduces the number you currently have as a payment for this.  This leaves you open for attack as you wait for your numbers to build back up.

The basic buildings are no problem, just send out more people than the number on the building to change its colour.  Towers and other buildings are a bit more difficult as they can fire back and reduce your army’s number before they reach the building.  Towers don’t automatically add new people to those already there, so you’ll need to supply them with more from other buildings.

Strategy ranges from trying to grab as many buildings as quickly as possible to ensuring that bases on the edges of the map have the maximum people in so you can use them to fill gaps nearer to enemy camps or to fill towers once they’re upgraded.

Although the concept is simple, don’t expect the game itself to hold your hand much beyond the first few levels.  Enemy AI ramps up pretty quickly and by about level 9 it’s fiendish.  It presents a real challenge, throwing enemies at you to overwhelm your defences and it takes some quick thinking and rapid clicking to thwart the influx of their armies.

Mushroom Wars

7.5

Overall

7.5/10

Pros

• Simple concept
• Provides a real challenge in later levels
• Good for those new to the RTS genre

Cons

• Not very complex for RTS veterans
• Simple graphics