MU-GEN NO TOU

MU-GEN NO TOU is a random game I had recommended in my Discovery Queue that caught my interest. The whole point of this game is to simply climb the tower as far as you can as fast as you can. You start off with 60 seconds and you gain additional time every time you advance to a new floor. There are enemies in the game but they can't kill you as you don't have HP in this game, instead they shave off time for each successful hit they land. There is also no level ups or permanent upgrades, only collectible powerups you have to find each run. Now you can defeat said enemies as you are armed with a sword but mashing the attack button isn't going to save the day. For example when I had a bat fly down towards me if I mashed the attack button that usually lead to me getting hit and losing time. The key here is to time the attack at the right time to take out the bat before it hits me. In order to better avoid the time penalty from getting hit by enemies timing your attacks or even jumps will be key. As previously mentioned there are powerups you can get which will help aid you and will always be found in a treasure box beside the door leading to the next floor, however you may not always find a treasure box. The powerup you get is random between three things: Wolf, Cross and Airjump. Wolf is a ground attack that looks like a shockwave that you can launch towards the enemy (good for taking out the goblin that likes to charge at you), the cross is an attack you can shoot in the air (I found this helpful for taking out bats before I got to them), and airjump is a double jump (which can help you navigate quicker). All powerups feel useful as long as you save them and utilize them at the right time. I'm going to be honest, with my first couple runs I thought I had wasted $0.99 but once I started to get a better grasp of timing my attacks and utilizing my powerups at appropriate moments, the game became a lot more fun. Once you complete a run you are given a score that goes to a local leaderboard and also an online one as well. This to me added more enjoyment as trying to improve your score and compete with others is fun to do in games every now and again kind of like old arcade games. The sad part is that as of this review there is only two players on the online rankings tab in game, me and another player. If more people played the game and added more life to the leaderboards I think this game could be a lot of fun competing with others to see who could reach a higher score and push other players to try and up their game. MU-GEN NO TOU is a game that I feel would shine much brighter if there were more players to liven up the leaderboards and this is coming from someone who mostly plays single player and doesn't put much interest into multiplayer aspects of games.