Nintendo will always be one of the most synonymous companies with gaming. One of their biggest decisions is to keep most of their major games such as Super Mario off of smartphones. While this is interesting from a business perspective, it also opens up the need for those games on the Google Play Store. Is Andrio’s World the platforming experience that will make us forget about Super Mario forever? Let’s take a look.
The Least Sincere Form Of Flattery
As you can see from the screenshots, Andrio’s World doesn’t dance around what it’s, ahem, paying homage to. From the main image on the Google Play Store we see a mustachioed overall-wearing man running from some fairly familiar looking enemies. At least they’re being honest?
When you start the game you’re greeted with a very familiar sites: blocks with question marks, coins, and bottomless pits. Going back to the enemies, each is basically a downgraded version of enemies from Super Mario World. We see low-grade Goombas, Koopas, and purple dragons I just learned were named Rex. (See? At least I learned something from this game.) The only original enemies I saw were frog mummies. When they put in something original, they go all out.
Is it wasn’t bad enough to rip off how the Mario games look, Andrio’s World takes it a step further. They also took many of the iconic sounds from the games. For example, when Andrio dies, what sounds like a slowed down version of the death sounds from Super Mario plays. I could forgive ripping off the ‘jump’ sound, but this is going too far.
Control Freakish
While I’ve spent a lot of time on the basic appearance of the game, the controls don’t offer much of a different story. There are two arrows along with jump and crouch buttons. This sounds fine at first, but then I found out how the ‘run’ button works. Basically, there are two halves to each arrow button, the arrow itself makes Andrio run while the rest of the arrow has him walking at a slow pace. I didn’t figure this out until I had let Andrio die many, many deaths.
At The Very Least…
It’s free. And that’s pretty much all it has going for it. It has some in-app purchases if you desire, but it never seemed like a priority to me. To its credit, the ads aren’t too intrusive and you are able to play again and again with little interruption.
Bottom Line
Have you ever gotten that store-brand soda that’s cheaper and kind of (emphasis on kind of) gets the job done? That’s how I see Andrio’s World. Except, since it’s free, it’d be more like some guy giving you a free liter of soda outside the grocery store. And that doesn’t really seem like a good idea to me.