Mushroom Wars: Space! Review

Not a whole lot is new in Zillion Whales' Mushroom Wars: Space! when compared to the first game. The tiny spore-based denizens still propagate at a speed that would astound a jackrabbit, and they still love annihilating each other in vicious land wars.

Are these two traits related? Hard to say for sure. Either way, if you're expecting massive innovation out of Mushroom Wars: Space!, it's not forthcoming. This isn't like Angry Birds adding "Space" to its name before flipping its physics system upside-down and backwards. This is still about conquering mushroom houses and towers in order to bolster your armies' numbers.

Like the first game, Mushroom Wars: Space! has different level goals to meet. Whatever you need to do generally requires a lot of manpower. Said manpower is created by capturing mushroom houses and turning them into strongholds wherein your mushroom folk get busy and produce other mushroom dudes in record time. You can sacrifice a certain number of a house's inhabitants to expand it, thus letting it fill up with more soldiers. As the mushrooms breed you can send large teams off to complete a level's specified mission, whether it's capturing all the enemy's houses, grabbing certain towers before the other side nabs it, or securing specially-marked houses.

The level packs for Mushroom Wars: Space! take place across differently-themed planets, which is presumably where the “Space!” bit of the moniker comes from. The multiplayer option (which allows for three players at once) has also been juiced up a bit with the inclusion of active and passive spells that can be crafted from ingredients you win in said battles.

The Mushroom Wars formula is as cute and addictive as it's ever been, which might be enough to convince long-time fans to transfer to space. However, it's just as likely they'll be disappointed to see more of the same ol' same ol' and a seeming hesitation to take advantage of all the weird, wacky tricks space could potentially offer the franchise.

If you haven't played Mushroom Wars at all though, you may as well suit up and shoot for the stars to see what all the fuss is about.