Quality-Time-Killer: Transformice!
Oftentimes, the hunt for multiplayer gaming can be fairly restrictive. Here’s an online shooter. Oh look, here’s another online shooter. And if you tire of online shooters, you’re often left with MMO’s like World of Warcraft. That’s not to say the aforementioned games are bad. They’re still fun and all, but sometimes it’s nice to throw in some variety. How about taking a puzzle game and adding a server full of teammates?
That’s the concept of Transformice. On the surface, it’s a normal, run-of-the-mill puzzle-platformer. You control a mouse and your goal is to grab some cheese and bring it back to your hole within the time limit. Now imagine that concept with a room full of fellow rodents all aiming for that same goal. That’s usually enough of a recipe for chaos, but now imagine one of those mice randomly placed in the role of ’shaman.’ The shaman can call forth boards, boxes, trampolines, and other helpful items to help all the mice get through obstacles and pits. This should lead to the formation of a well-oiled machine where everyone gets their cheese, but things rarely work out that way.
Each game has the potential for fun and good-natured frustration. Boards placed by shamans can help mice get across a pit, but the weight of a group of mice can result in the board collapsing to one side, leading to another group of mice falling to their deaths. You’ll also occasionally get the troll shaman, as the shaman selected may have more interest in bumping off other mice with beach balls and anvils than helping players reach the cheese. Conversely, shamans can try and help the mice reach a distant piece of cheese, but uncooperative and impatient mice can often knock over boxes or get stuck between boards. There are over 60 maps, and no two games are ever the same.
In certain areas, the game is in a rough state. Shaman controls aren’t the most user-friendly, and even the help guide can take a while to understand. There are potential game-killing bugs to be found. One of them features a stage with a spinning board in the center — it’s meant to have a fan effect, but certain mice will not be affected at all by the fan while others will get blown away in the blink of an eye. Another frustration is the invisible pit. While the game intends to throw in traps like the invisible pit and unseen wind, there’s no way to tell where these obstacles are and it’ll often take one mouse falling into the abyss for others to realize that something’s amiss. It’s not so much fun when that guinea pig mouse is you. All that can be tolerated, but what can a player do when their mouse is spawned over a pit? This is the most aggravating bug in the game, by far, because once your mouse is spawned over a pit and you fall to your death, you’re forced to wait for the rest of the players to finish the level. Undeniably, the developers have some kinks to work out, but the game looks to be under constant support, as developers have a contact e-mail and a Twitter feed available from their website. There’s good reason to believe these issues will eventually be addressed.
The most encouraging aspect of Transformice is that it shows the potential for multiplayer titles in different genres. Puzzle games are typically a single-player experience, but Transformice is able to take what’s normally an individual genre and successfully make it something to experience with a large group of people. It could lead to other would-be developers crafting a multiplayer title out of what is normally an individual experience. Imagine a title like Braid supporting servers of up to 16 or 32 players. Picture a title like Scribblenauts with 16 players trying to reach the end and one person randomly selected to draw items and weapons for the other players to use. That’s the kind of concept that Transformice is potentially paving the way for.
Transformice is great for a multiplayer experience and each level is short enough that the game should attract players without a lot of time on their hands. Be forewarned, however, that the in-game chat is not filtered. Be prepared for foul language and inappropriate content from the players, themselves. With that said, when you’re ready for rodent madness, load up Transformice and say “cheese!”
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Sungwon Son
