Thanks to Ratalaika Games for the review code

Title: Mochi Mochi Boy
System: PS4
Price: $4.99
Release Date: 07/16/2019

---

Presentation

Mochi Mochi Boy looks pretty darn colorful, going with a very kid-friendly art style with bright colors and cute expressions. There’s really not much else to say here outside of the fact that the different slimes you rescue have some goofy and adorable designs.

Gameplay

In Mochi Mochi Boy, the main goal of the game is to clear each stage by filling the entirety of it up with your body, while dodging enemies and trying to avoid getting trapped. Being a puzzle game, the only control you really need to keep in mind is simply how to move. There is a restart and a kill button however, in case you get stuck on a stage or just want to quit out of the mode entirely. The closest to any comparisons I can make off the top of my head would be if the score chaser Snake met Wallace’s Gym puzzle from Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire.

What starts off as simplistic, easygoing romps slowly ramp up in difficulty as more gimmicks are introduced, from enemies, obstacles that can block your path or trap you, warp panels, and deadly spikes, there’s a lot that a stage can throw at you to make you think outside the box. Since the main game mode allows you to retry infinitely, (unless you get killed, which requires you to actually restart the mode and continue from where you left off) the challenge more of less come from the inevitable roadblocks you’ll face, and the lack of being able to skip a stage is unfortunate as a result. Still, these stages were decent fun, although nothing that felt immensely clever.

To me, the real highlight of the game comes from the Dungeon mode, where ten randomly generated levels are thrown at the player for them to complete. These can follow similar layouts to levels from the main game mode, but the hazards are completely randomized each time, and with tons of layouts the game chooses from, it’s not really that easy to get a level you’ve seen before. (the first one excluded) However, as a result, the difficulty can be all over the place. You may find a brain crushing puzzle on stage 2 in one attempt, only for all the levels up to stage 7 to be a total cakewalk the next time. Still, as a time attack mode this is quite fun and is easily the most replayable aspect of the game, though that isn’t saying too much.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Mochi Mochi Boy is a puzzler that I found to be pretty enjoyable, although incredibly basic. It gets the job done and is a fun way to test your thinking skills, but it’s nothing that you’ve probably haven’t seen before on mobile devices. By far the highlight of the game comes from the Dungeon mode due to the randomized nature, but even that will wear thin after a while. For $5 this isn’t a bad deal at all, though I wish even more variety was placed into the levels and especially the trophies, which are so half-assed that you can get all of them by playing only thirty main stages and barely progressing in the tower mode. Still, this is a fun puzzler to check out on the cheap!

I give Mochi Mochi Boy a 6 out of 10.