Clever gameplay? Aesthetic allure? Immediacy and variety? – Check, check, and check. Nintendo’s classic form and function.
“Surprise Mechanics”? Microtransactions? Limited playability? – Also check, check, and check. Mobile Games’ classic form and function.
Dr. Mario World, with a foot in each world, crudely balances between brilliance and second-rate insignificance. Cast in a negative light, Dr. Mario World is microtransaction-plagued, unimaginative and complicit within predatory industry practices. And cast positively, Dr. Mario World provokes ingenuity for tile-matching puzzlers, offering freshness in an oversaturated market while packing a lot into a small package.
Put simply, the feel of Dr. Mario World is charming. It allures with the promise of our familiar Marioverse, with a steady stream of rewards and checkpoints forever ding-ding-dinging resource bars higher and higher, and with the simple joy of playing as Dr. Bowser–all built auxiliary to an easily-grasped and hard-to-master gameplay loop.
Experienced mostly the same in both modes, Stage Mode and Versus Mode, the general mechanic of the game is to match colors of the viruses with the colors of pills that you release from the bottom of the stage, floating only upwards or sideways. A variety of stages, powerups, and unique item interactions puts Dr. Mario World on par with most other Candy Crush-lite games. But what makes Dr. Mario World compelling is the interactivity of moving pills all across the board horizontally to form the board in whatever mutation desired.
I used to play chess competitively as a youngster, and one of the most stressful components of tournament chess is the rule of Touch Chess: Once you touch a piece during your turn you must move that piece. And I have rekindled that old stress in Dr. Mario World–every time I slide those pills up the screen I’m crossing an exhilarating threshold, I’m pushing the puzzle ahead and giving form to a strategic future.
The tile-matching mechanics here remind me of Stephen’s Sausage Roll for its simple but mind-bending puzzles, and of Tetris for its player-generated chaos. In Stage Mode, where there is no timer, the benefits of planning each pill’s exact placement is a struggle made necessary in later stages. In Versus Mode, the pressure of your opponent sending extra lines ends up creating chaos at a rapid pace and finding those small harmonies amongst the discord is addicting.
So at its core, Dr. Mario World is a smooth, well-oiled machine constantly engaging different modes of sensory information, effectively building a desired atmosphere of short-term immersion.
Offering both variety and replayability in its core mechanics, Dr. Mario World also appeals to a variety of audiences with its multiple game modes. Casual tile-matchers can relish in Stage Mode, hardcore players can grind ranked Versus Mode matches on a ladder, and children with their parent’s credit card can have a hoot in the “Surprise Mechanic” only microtransaction store.
Oh yeah… About the microtransactions….
Mobile Games criticism has, for years, critiqued the cheaply-produced, cash-grabbing, and gambling nature of playable content locked behind random loot boxes. Similarly, the free-to-play but limited play time models have garnered criticism for their lopsided design.
These types of microtransactions are in Dr. Mario World. They cheapen the experience. They make the core of the game off putting.
Nintendo isn’t the worst-of-the-worst and they haven’t made the randomized loot overly difficult to obtain with in-game currency. However, the recharge time for Stage Mode does seriously limit the playability. On top of that, Dr. Mario World is only playable online, a massive drawback for what is supposed to be a “mobile” game.
Dr. Mario World is a game I enjoy to load up in quick 30 minute gaming sessions, to tease my brain a little, and to fall into the charm of progressing through the medical rotations in the Marioverse. It’s also a game that I struggle with on an ethical basis as a consumer and reviewer. Torn between my enjoyment and game design at large, I’ll score Dr. Mario World:
Score: 7
Check Out the Dr. Mario World Trailer:
For more information about Dr. Mario World, visit https://drmario-world.com.
Android Review
Recent Michigan State University grad and current Game Studies researcher who plays fantasy RPG's to escape, Smash to compete, and Stardew to chill. Also have a +1 to rage/toxicity resistance due to the many hours sunk into WoW, R6, and LoL.
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