You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/naheulbeuks-dungeon-master.2411/

The setting of Naheulbeuk’s Dungeon Master may be a familiar one if you’ve played the game before it, the aptly titled Dungeon of Naheulbeuk. Setting itself up as a prequel, it tasks you with building the twice-titular dungeon as the steward to an incompetent dungeon master. With a comedic cast and a satirical take on the genre, how does Naheulbeuk stack up against the rest?

Welcome to the Dungeon

Serving as a tutorial on how to play as well as a brief storyline, the campaign is the natural way to jump into the game. With just a small tavern, a kitchen, and a dungeon master to please, you enter the tower as the unemployed half-goblin Reivax to get things moving. Your goal? To get this dungeon off the ground and on the map, and you’ve surely got a long way to go.

Unlike other dungeons, Naheulbeuk manages to get a stable stream of income not just from defeating adventurers that wander in, but from a slightly more healthy tavern that’s accessible to the general public. I do think this is a really neat concept as a means of dividing your attention and giving you a way to recover should the worst happen and your treasures be plundered. With its own set of costs and an amusingly-named Tripe Adviser rating to maintain, there are the makings of a really fun subset of the larger game here. And as a whole I did enjoy it. As time went on though, I noticed it to be my primary source of revenue, seeing me pivot to having almost the entirety of my dungeon’s first floor be a tavern to hold and serve as many customers as possible. With how big a part it ended up playing in the success of my dungeon, I really would’ve liked to see more depth in this area of the game.

While the Tripe Adviser score is a nice idea, it really does nothing more than the prestige system associated with other rooms in the tower, with it being increased by placing decorations down. I learned quite early on that you can just max these out quickly by placing wall decorations all the way around the room, and that was that. I have a fundamental feeling that there should be more to this and that I’m playing it wrong, but with the game constantly rewarding my actions I’m left with mixed messages.

When it comes to building the dungeon itself, it really feels like there’s a lot missing for what I would consider to be satisfying. To start, while your dungeon does have a set entrance point, there’s no actual guarantee adventurers will use it. Instead they can crop up at any number of doorways in your dungeon, and sometimes just appear out of nowhere. This entirely removes any idea of planning you could have put into an effective design. I want to build mazes, have rooms with set enemies, boss battles. I want to craft something fun and watch people come and get stomped down at varying points, letting me tweak and evolve. With raids on your tower targeting different rooms each time around, you can’t really put much thought into making a meaningful path for adventurers, and with your own staff walking the same corridors and susceptible to the same traps, you aren’t really encouraged to rig much up either. I do understand that this game is something of a parody of the genre, and I want to cut it some slack for letting me down on what I would consider the traditional aspects of the genre, but it just doesn’t pick it up elsewhere.

Staffing Nightmares

Despite this being a dungeon management game, you’ll likely find the majority of your time being spent on the staff more than the dungeon itself. To assist in running the place, you’ll have a selection of 11 occupations, each with an associated origin. Some of these are entirely set, with your domestic staff always being elves, and your bankers being dwarves. For others you might get a selection of origins, like how chefs can be either human, elf, or orc to cater to different needs. It’s all supposed to be a bit of a balancing act to get things running just right, with staff striking and quitting if you don’t meet their needs.

Within your staff you’ll have to overcome clashes in ideology, with some races preferring cleanliness, and others filth, among other things. On top of this, races like dwarves will need special beds to sleep in and tables to sit at due to their small stature. I like all of this on paper, even if it isn’t exactly what I thought the game would be. There’s a lot going on, and with up to 210 minions on the payroll at the end of the game, there really is a lot to be thinking about. The real issue with having this as your focus is that it shines such a light onto the balancing of all these needs, and I really don’t think the game is where it needs to be at for it to be satisfying.

After five or six hours of trying to meet everybody’s needs I just gave up, and what’s weirder is that I wasn’t really punished for it. You can think of minions really falling into one of three categories. You have guards who’s sole purpose is to stave off adventurers and raiders coming down on your grand dungeon. After that you have minions who produce something that’ll be useful. These are your artisans making tools and weapons, your spies collecting intelligence and the like. Finally you have what I’d describe as the meta staff, who don’t necessarily provide you with anything directly, but whose work in the dungeon keeps other staff happy. The domestic minions are the biggest part of this category, tasked with keeping things clean. You also have have cooks and medics here too though.

Where all of this staffing falls somewhat into shambles is the fact that you really don’t care if they walk out on you, and this is true for all three of these major categories. Guards are summoned to the dungeon weekly based on a specific item being placed in the Guard’s Room. One Human Guard Locker equates to one, as you might have guessed it, human guard. An elf guard locker grants you an elf guard, and you can probably figure out the rest. The way these work is that if the guard that was assigned to the locker has died or, God forbid, quit, another will be hired as soon as the next week begins. You can probably see where I’m going with this. It feels like the game expects you to value your guards and train them for a strong fighting force, but there really isn’t any need if you just have a bunch of guards and are happy to throw them at a problem. Even if an incursion is particularly strong, if it happens to roll into the next in-game week, your defeated guards will be replaced all the same, and the new hires are more than happy to finish the job.

The production staff is where you would imagine more care is needed. They’re actively producing a resource that will be helpful to the larger running of the dungeon, and you should naturally want that continuous stream of resources. It just doesn’t work out that way though. You have so much space in the dungeon that it’s possible to setup massive workstations for each of these production types. You can worry about keeping them around if you really care about that passive income, but in reality you can keep your staff list light and just hire a hundred of the minion type you want as and when you need the resource. This is something I did quite heavily in my playthrough with Spies thanks to the intel they produce allowing me to go out on raids and get bonus rewards for my troubles. I ended up with a huge room that sat empty most of the time, but it really didn’t negatively affect anything.

The last of our staff type is probably the most laughable, because if we don’t care about maintaining our staff at all, they’re entirely useless out of the gate. Looking at the HR sheet in my game, my tower really just consists of a hundred or so guards, a handful of bankers… And that’s it. It remains profitable and it’s perfectly capable of keeping invaders at bay. To some extent I do have to commend the game for allowing such a degree of freedom as to enable this kind of playstyle, but it really does feel counterintuitive to what the game wants from you.

An Idle Dream

For all my issues with the game, I do actually think it does well as what I would call a second monitor game once you’re past the initial setup phase. That phase in itself isn’t necessarily short either, and getting it optimally does involve engaging with the staffing balance more than I felt encouraged to. If you do find that though, it’s something you can leave running and check back in on while doing other things. It’s the kind of game I really appreciate when working from home that can just provide me with a micro break to take my mind off a task to see how a raid went down. If you’re working on a separate PC to the game this does work well, but I do feel the need to highlight that it didn’t quite go that way for me.

If you’re limited to a single PC, you’ll be exposed to more than a few quite nasty bugs. The most prevalent of these is a simple crash that seems to happen randomly when tabbing back into the game, even when it’s left running as a borderless window. The audio distorts slightly, and a few moments later it’s all just gone. Even when it does all work though, being left alone seems to cause the AI to randomly stop on occasion, with my 200k of savings also disappearing in an instant. Nothing happened in the game after that, it was quite odd. To give credit where due, the developers are actively looking into bugs, with the staff AI being under a particular microscope in terms of both bugs and balance. I would like to believe this will improve over time, but as it now it can be a tough sell.

Closing Thoughts

All in all Naheulbeuk’s Dungeon Master is a game that has the makings of something fun, but just falls short for me to be able to recommend it to most people. For a game about managing a dungeon, there’s really not much dungeon management at play, with the actual core of the gameplay being unbalanced to the point of being able to ignore it at the time of writing. I want to see this game do better, but even properly balanced I’d likely feel shortchanged.

You can find this review in full at GBAtemp.net:
https://gbatemp.net/review/super-mario-bros-wonder.2406/

A series many of us will have grown up with, Super Mario Bros is the absolute titan of the 2D platforming space. With huge releases on all but two of Nintendo’s major platforms, it had previously struck some as odd that the Switch hasn’t seen any new content since its launch in 2017. At last however the dry spell has ended, and an astonishing 11 years after the debut of New Super Mario Bros U as a launch title for the Wii U, we rejoin the peerless plumber himself to see whether it was really worth the wait.

A New Beginning

The story this time opens to Mario and our colourful cast heading to the Flower Kingdom on the invitation of its prince Florian. Much to nobody’s surprise, the festivities are interrupted a certain reptilian monarch, kicking off the quest to once again thwart his evil schemes. So what’s the plan this time? To use the Wonder Flower and, hear me out, merge with a castle to… Frankly I’m not even sure what the end goal was here. Regardless he does need to be stopped, and you have one heck of a crew assembled to stand in his way.

Outside of the series staples Mario and Luigi, and New Super Mario Bros staples of Toad and less good Toad, we’re joined by princesses Peach and Daisy, Toadette, an assortment of Yoshis, and Nabbit. It’s quite refreshing to have a story start out with the princess not being capturing, and it’s great to finally have both Peach and Daisy as a playable characters in a 2D Mario game. This diverse cast does come with a bit of a caveat in that most of them play exactly the same, with Yoshi and Nabbit basically functioning as an easy mode. While Nabbit just walks through any potential source of damage and is a great choice for the younger siblings of the world, it is neat to see Yoshi getting some unique moves in their signature flutter jump and eating abilities. You also won’t take damage as Yoshi, but you will at least be knocked back. It’s a decent middle ground, and also just a really fun character to use if you want some variety later into the game.

Jumping right into the first level gives you a great taste of what’s to come, and believe me there’s a lot to like. Movement feels snappy and responsive, and the larger art style is a real breath of fresh air after seeing much of the same from the New Super Mario Bros games for the past 17 years. The music especially stands out, and this is something you’ll notice throughout the game with the game’s style and flair really shining in the audio. From this early stage it’s small details like the music emphasising brass once you’ve picked up the new Elephant Fruit power up, but as you progress the soundtrack does more and more to stand out. This isn’t just something that just sits in the background, it really goes a long way in supporting the unique and interesting visuals.

Out of the gate you’re given the new Elephant Fruit, which is fairly typical for a 2D Mario game. Mario 3 gave you the Raccoon Suit, New Super Mario Bros gave you the giant mushroom, Wii gave you the Propeller Suit, and U gave you the Squirrel Suit. It follows tradition to show you this shiny new power from the start but I couldn’t help feeling underwhelmed. It set me off on the game with a bit of a sour taste for just how minor the power-up felt compared to its predecessors. You can break blocks and spray water from your trunk, but it lacks the same freedom given to you by the various flight-enabling power-ups that came before it. As I played more though, I did start to understand. It sets a tone that you won’t break a level so easily with power-ups by just avoiding all of its dangers and flying above. Instead, the levels are designed to be broken on their own terms with thanks to the Wonder Flowers, and this is where the game really comes into its own.

Flower Power

At the core of any Mario game is of course its level design, and it’s here we’ve seen the majority of the series development since New Super Mario Bros hit the scene in 2006. We’ve seen new levels, we’ve seen fresh power-ups, but that’s really been it. Thanks to the addition of Wonder Flowers, this game steps things up to another level. With one in each traditional level, these flowers warp and contort your surroundings in any number of unexpected and bizarre ways. Ranging from altered graphics and twisting scenery to a sky raining stars, a singing entourage of plants and ghosts to the game transforming into a top-down Zelda-style dungeon, the Wonder Flowers are an absolute treat in crafting an entirely unique and fresh experience from start to end.

Where I really found myself impressed though is the fact that almost all of them are entirely optional. You see when you beat a level you’ll be rewarded with a Wonder Seed. You’ll need a certain number of these seeds to access key levels to progress in the game, and you can get an extra one from any level with a Wonder Flower by just finding it and playing through the section. You’re rewarded for that exploration and discovery, but you’re also not punished for missing them. With each level you often find yourself with two entirely differing environments, two ways to play. On my first playthrough I had so much fun just running through some levels and getting to the end, and I love that I was entirely able to do so. I think the Wonder Flowers are one of the best things to happen for the 2D Mario series, but it’s fantastic to see the core gameplay hasn’t been neglected for their inclusion. Pick and choose, play how you’d like. If you want to see all there is, you basically have double the levels at your disposal in choosing to or not to take the flower.

Badge of Honour

Beyond new power-ups and the Wonder Flowers though are something far simpler, yet just as impactful on your larger experience as you go from level to level. A first for 2D Mario, badges are additional unlockable abilities that can be equipped prior to entering a level. These abilities range from minor bonuses like getting coins for defeating enemies, to fundamentally changing core mechanics like movement speed and jump height. There’s a lot to like even on a surface level, with these badges enabling really fun mechanics to come back into the game in a much more granular form than something like Toadette’s Crown power-up in the Switch version of New Super Mario Bros U. They’re well-designed where nothing feels particularly broken, and even taking what might be seen as an easy mode option like saving yourself from falling into a pit is a meaningful choice you have to make in depriving yourself of something that may be either more fun or overall more useful in the level. I found myself switching up badges pretty often, even outside of levels that are largely designed for one badge over another (think water levels as a key example here, where one badge lets you dash in water).

Really my only fault with badges is in the linearity of obtaining them. I will admit a lot of this disappointment comes from the fact I was looking forward to playing with the Grappling Vine badge since its inclusion in an early trailer, only to go through the majority of the game with it nowhere in sight. This just comes down to how badges are unlocked, and it’s something I’m not really sure there would be an easy fix for. Badges are either tied to beating specific levels, usually a short challenge to act as a tutorial for the badge in question, or specific shops in the overworld. Because these levels and shops are locations you progress to, you can naturally only have certain badges at certain points in the game. A reasonable middle-ground may have been to pace badge obtaining to the first half of the game, and then spend the second half really ramping up their usage as you’ve had some time to get used to them. It just feels a shame to have these really fun powers and not all that much time to get the most out of some of them.

A Vast World

Between the levels designed for specific badges and levels that just fit them well, you do at least get a glimpse of what each badge can do at its best, and it does take us quite nicely onto talking about the larger topic of level variety. You obviously have your traditional levels. These follow a fairly standard formula that you’ll be familiar with if you’ve played any 2D Mario game before this one, and that’s not a bad thing. Each of these levels has three collectable large coins, a Wonder Seed to be collected by getting to the flagpole, and an additional Wonder Seed to be collected by finding the Wonder Flower in the level and completing its section. You might also find a secret exit here or there to reward you with an additional seed and an alternate path on the world map. Outside of your staples though, it is nice to see something more. I’ve already touched on badge challenges, providing a space to teach you how to use unique badges, and then later going onto test you with them. On top of these, you also have Wiggler races, which are a straight dash to the goal against a roller-blading Wiggler, KO Arenas, which pit you against several rooms of enemies on a timer, and finally Break Times, which are short and often one-screen levels to break up the action a touch.

I really had a great time moving between the level types, and the variety on offer did a good job in keeping the game interesting. There was one type of level in particular though that I felt could just be frustrating if playing alone, these being the Search Parties. These levels take what is potentially the most annoying aspect of user-generated Mario Maker levels, invisible blocks, and decides to run with it several times over through the game. Your goal here is to collect five fragments to form a complete seed to beat the level. These fragments are, as I mentioned, either hidden in invisible blocks, or are accessible by hitting invisible blocks. On paper this is absolutely awful design, and if you’ve played the game entirely offline, I can see very little in the way of redemption for some of these levels, the first one in particular. I do understand what they were going for though, and I can if nothing else appreciate the vision.

A Wonderful Community

Multiplayer in Mario Wonder works a touch differently to its predecessors, in no small part due to the inclusion of an online mode. While this online mode does let you host a lobby with your friends, its primary function serves to put you into a world of random people playing the game at the same time as you, and you’re able to see them in both the overworld and level. Whether playing with friends or random people, you won’t be able to throw them and you can’t mess with them, but you do get a real sense of togetherness as you venture on. This togetherness is the core of the Search Party levels, and it’s only because of it I was able to get through them without just looking up a guide. Seeing other people run around, or standing mysteriously midair ended up being a genuinely fun time. People stopped to help me, and I felt compelled to do the same in pointing the way. This togetherness really does go beyond these specifically-tailored levels and spills into the game as a whole.

My strongest memory of Wonder was playing an auto-scrolling airship level a few days after launch. I had a few people in there with me making progress at their own pace, and I happened to get hit on a section that required using a cloud to navigate it. Thanks to a helpful person nearby I managed to revive myself, and for that I was treated to a surprisingly difficult platforming problem of manoeuvring rotating canons you were really meant to be flying around. I came to enjoy these small interactions, and did my part in return on some of the later levels as I guided two poor souls while they fell into lava comically often. I didn’t expect much from the multiplayer as somebody who usually plays these games alone, but the seamless nature of it connecting automatically once you’ve been online once and the community itself made it a surprise standout. In a way it reminds me of a Dark Souls game though, where I can imagine much of this activity and magic will die down within the weeks and months following release.

I will also mention here that local multiplayer has seen some changes, with the biggest being that players can’t interact with each other anymore. There is one exception here with somebody playing as Yoshi being able to carry another player per the classic mechanic, but that’s really it. I’m personally torn as to whether this is an issue. On one hand we all have our fond memories of dumping a family member or friend into a lava pit when playing New Super Mario Bros Wii, only for them to throw the Wiimote onto the ground and leave the room. We all cherish those memories I’m sure. Is it what Nintendo want these games to be remembered for though? Probably not. Wonder puts a much higher emphasis on players supporting each other, and its version of multiplayer certainly meets this vision. It’s not necessarily worse off for it, but I can understand some degree of disappointment.

The Difficulty of a Mario Game

In terms of difficulty you really have a mixed bag in Wonder. The series as a whole has often put more of an emphasis on accessibility and creativity, and this game really sticks to that principle. It’s marvellously fun, and I feel there’s something to be had here regardless of whether you’re a child joining the series for the first time or somebody like me who’s grown up with it. I will stress there are some challenges, with the Special World in particular standing out in this respect, not to mention the very final level of the game should you choose to seek it out. The key here though is that these challenges are entirely out of the way, and you find that being common among the majority of the game’s major hurdles. They’re optional, and that’s just really good design.

The world map is central to this, and though it’s just a hub to move between levels, it’s certainly the best iteration we’ve seen to date. You can think of it as being made of three parts: linear sections where you have to beat a single level to unlock the next, an open selection of levels to pick between, and locked levels that require a set number of Wonder Seeds to open. Generally speaking the first category are your simpler traditional levels, introducing you to the larger style of a world and the themes at play, and acting as go-betweens for the larger open sections. These open sections are the meat of the game, featuring the assortment of levels available I mentioned earlier. Where this system shines is in the optional Wonder Seeds available to pick up in most traditional levels. With these, you’re open to avoid levels if you do find yourself hitting a wall, allowing for a few solid trials to be scattered around, even as early as the first world. Finally you have your locked stages, these often being castles or other minor hurdles. I did often find these less difficult than some of the stages available in the open areas, but they do strike a good balance for being stages that can’t be avoided. It’s a satisfying step up, if only a minor one, to test you on your journey.

I do also want to say how much I enjoyed the variety in terms of actual world design. In what is to my knowledge a series first, worlds don’t always end in a castle. This sounds like a small change, but it really is refreshing to see new ideas being tossed around. One world sees you tested for your worthiness to obtain the Royal Seed you’re hunting, and another sees you delve deep underground to rescue a group of Toads after a cave-in. They’re small details, but they really do add up to avoid the game feeling stale as it progresses. The castles themselves still managed to feel creative with enemies appearing around you as you make your way through them. One area that really fell short though was the bosses.

The Obligation of Bosses

Disappointing. There’s really no other word for them. In a game that screams creativity and variety, they for some reason decided to make every castle boss into the exact same fight. I hope you like Bowser Jr because you’ll be seeing him a lot! Now these fights have some interesting elements. The core idea is that they start out normal, you jump on the child Koopa’s head, and then things start to spice up with some Wonder power. This might warp the room, it might affect you, or it might affect Bowser Jr. If this were just one fight I think it’d be a fine idea, but it isn’t. It’s especially frustrating when you realise they already had a winning formula for this in 1995 with Yoshi’s Island on the SNES.

In that game, you see Kamek turn completely normal enemies into wildly creative and fun bosses by throwing some magic on them. That’s all we really needed. Enemies have so much personality in this game thanks to their revamped graphics and animations, and I’d have loved to have seen this turned up to 11 and thrown into a spotlight. The bosses here feel more like an obligation than something to look forward to, and that really shouldn’t be the case. To some extent the game redeems itself with a surprisingly fun end to the story, but it just doesn’t do enough for me.

Closing Thoughts

When all is said and done, I can absolutely recommend Mario Wonder to anybody wanting a great platformer on their Switch. Though certainly not without flaws, it stands as my favourite 2D Mario experience thanks to its overwhelming creativity and style. It’s an absolute breath of fresh air to what many have viewed as a stagnating franchise, and it has me excited to see what’s coming next.