Mighty Flip Champs! Review

Hello again! DeltaBurnt here delivering my first of many expected DSiWare reviews. As you may know already DSiWare are applications you can download from the DSi Shop channel. These applications can have many different purposes, but most of the time these applications are games. DSiWare also can take advantage of the DSi’s new power and two cameras (unlike most retail games). Each DSiWare application costs either 200, 500, 800+, or no DSi points at all (100 points basically equals a dollar). Anyways in this blog post I will be reviewing Mighty Flip Champs!, one of the more recent games from WayForward. Continue reading to see the full review.

Introduction –

Mighty Flip Champs! is a 2D platforming puzzle game from WayForward. It costs 800 DSi Points from the DSi Shop and takes up 48 blocks (pretty small, DSi Browser takes up 94 blocks and Flipnote Studio takes up 87 blocks). The developers, WayForward, are known for creating games for movies and popular kids shows (such as Spongebob, Shrek, Where the Wild Things Are). They are also known for creating the Shantae game (for the Gameboy Advance) and the Wii remake for the NES classic a Boy and His Blob. So it’s kind of hard to tell whether this game will end up good, like Shantae, or end up like some of the lesser played games WayForward makes.

Graphics –

Seeing as how the graphics are the first thing you notice in any game I’ll go ahead and start with that. The graphics are a little iffy in my opinion. They’re 2D and could probably be easily run on the Gameboy Advance (they may have to make some changes to the game itself to make it work on the GBA, I’m just saying the graphics themselves could probably be run on a GBA not the whole game).

Example of the graphics in Mighty Flip Champs!

There are some cool effects like the  bottom screen shows the next page in the puzzle you’re on (I’ll explain that more in the gameplay section) and this preview has a wave effect. Other than that though the graphics are pretty simple, but it’s not bad that the graphics are simple (in fact many people like it that way) it’s just DSiWare is allowed to use all of the DSi’s new power. I was just hoping there would be some part of the game that would take advantage of that (like some of the DSiWare games already have). Anyways as a summary, it’s nothing too bad but it’s nothing stunning either. This part of the review won’t have much of an affect on the overall rating because you can tell this game was made more for it’s gameplay and not graphics.

Gamplay-

The gameplay is somewhat interesting. You play as a girl named Alta who somehow attained a magic wand which let’s you flip between alternate dimensions. These alternate dimensions or “pages” have small changes from the original, like a book. Every level/stage you play in the game has it’s own layouts and different number of pages (it can get up to 7 different pages). Each stage you play through you have to use this flipping mechanic to get around walls, spikes and other types of obstacles. You have to solve the stages puzzles successfully by turning on/off switches, going through portals, and flipping through pages at the right time. The way you end the stage is by reaching FishMan, a giant green toad looking fish that can somehow teleport Alta to safety (this is never elaborated on, wish it was). A lot of times you have to rescue a cat, pig , cow, or all of them at once before FishMan will teleport you out of the stage. A lot of times this means back tracking, especially on stages which use the switch mechanic (it’s similar to Zelda’s switch mechanic, if you step on the blue switch all blue block will disappear if they are currently there or reappear if they aren’t there and the same for other colors). There’s about 42 stages including the sound test stage. The way stages are separated is into worlds, there’s 5 worlds and each have a different look and background music. Every 8 stages takes you to a new world, and every 7 stages you have a ? stage (So it goes stage 1-7, 1-?, then 2-1). In every ? stage (except one) Alta’s wand will malfunction and you have a limited amount of time before the page flips whether you’re ready or not.

Oh no! Alta’s wand is switching pages on it’s own!

Most of the time these stages don’t have much of a puzzle to them they have more of a “keep going and make sure not to die” thing. Basically you just take whatever path you have until you get to FishMan.

The puzzles’ difficulties don’t really depend on what world you’re on or how far you are into the world. One puzzle may take me 5 minutes to do but then the next puzzle could just be so easy it takes less than a minute. A lot of times it seems like it’s more or less the number of pages that decide the difficulty of the stage (a 2 page stage is alot easier because you can always see what’s on the other page because you can only see the next page on the bottom screen and that’s all). There’s maybe 2 puzzles, on average, in every world that will take a long time but other than that the puzzles are kind of easy. Some of the puzzles are just based on reflex and have no puzzle to them at all (I.E. Level 5-?, you have to switch pages when falling right before you hit spikes and you must do that about 20+ times in a row to finally reach the end).

Controls-

The controls in this game are what I like to call stiff controls. They’re slow, you can’t jump, and when you fall you have to fall in a straight line. But this is to be excepted from a puzzle platformer. Anyways the controls are actually pretty simple. You use the arrow keys to move, up to start climbing on a fence (basically a ladder), and A/B/X/Y to flip to the next page. To save one of the cats/cows/pigs and be saved by FishMan all you have to do is walk up to them. Pretty simple and easy. A neat little trick that they also added in is that if you touch a spot on the touch screen in will mark the that area and then that mark will also show on the current page you’re on and the next page. I like to use this for when I’m falling and while in the middle of falling I have to switch pages at an exact time.

The title screen is very simple and sweet. Touching the button takes you to stage select.

Sound-

Another pretty simple/short topic. The music in the game is pretty good. The background music in each world somewhat reflects what the world is like. This is more of less a insignificant topic. Once you beat the last level you unlock a neat little sound test level which has two pages which are identical except for the switches on the floor. Stepping on one of the switches plays a sound from the game.

Re-playability-

There isn’t much re-playability besides the fact that you can go back to levels and try to get better times. Getting better times will get you a better rank. On each level you get ranked with either a D, C, B, A, or S. S being the best and D being the worst. The rank is more or less just based on the time it takes you to finish a level (there’s a timer in the top of the screen that shows how long it’s taken you to complete the stage). Really the only thing you get from beating every level on S rank is an alternate Title Screen look (I was really hoping for a harder mode to be unlocked since alot of the puzzles can be snoozers at times).

The stage list, it shows your time, the number of flips it took to complete, and your rank.

Other-

Here’s a video of an interview with the developers of the game. It explains the game a little bit and has some gameplay footage:

Mighty Flip Champs! WayForward Interview

Overall-

Graphics, 4.5/5: I have nothing against 2D graphics, and the graphics themselves were made great it’s just they could have atleast done something like New Super Mario Bros. and make 3D characters. That honestly could have taken a couple days worth of effort (if they hadn’t already gotten to far into the game that is).

Gamplay, 17/20: Cool gameplay mechanics, it’s definitely been done before (mostly in flash games). There could be more stages and harder levels in my opinion.

Controls, 5/5: Simple controls, easy enough for anyone to pickup on without even needing to use the help function (they don’t teach you controls in the game, you just have to goto a little standard Help system used by most DSiWare). Also has the cool function for marking an area on the touch screen and it will mark it on the same spot on the top screen.

Sound, 5/5: Well this is kind of like graphics, it’s pretty good and they also give you a sound test stage which I like. Pretty short and simple. Has good quality music that matches the feel of the worlds.

Re-playability, 5/10: I Although the game does include the ranking system so that you can try to get an S on every stage this get’s you little to nothing. If it had given you a harder difficulty this would unlock more gameplay to be enjoyed, but all it does it give you a different title screen look. I mean yes, getting an S on every stage does feel accomplishing, you can show it to your friends, and you can brag about it online. But in the end of the day all it is is just a letter. The S ranks would feel alot more accomplishing if there was a harder mode to do the game on, because it’s like beating a game at 100% on the hardest mode and getting a secret ending (even though you might not get a secret ending) it feels really good!

My opinion: I’m honestly not a fan of puzzle games like this (especially the ones with “stiff” controls). I was more thinking this would be a fast paced game where you have to constantly be moving. The game itself is okay, I just wish it had a little more than just the stages. They basically throw you some puzzles at you and say “Here have fun”. Adding one more difficulty level may have sold the game for me. The only thing extra they did was give us a sound test stage. I also don’t really enjoy games without story, although I didn’t count off far that (because it’s obviously not meant to have a story) it’s just I like my games to have story to keep me hooked onto it. The very last stage, (spoilers…I guess…) Skull-Skull (it’s two graphics of skulls) was what I was hoping the entire game would be like really. It has some gameplay mechanics that levels in the rest of the game don’t even have (like there’s no platforms at all on one page but on the next page there’s a path of blocks you can see each colored differently, so you would have to use that to help walk and go on the invisible platforms/fences). It has a good amount of reflex action (flipping a page at the right time), puzzles, and at the end it gets really fast paced because Alta’s wand starts to randomly flip pages. Anyways, to summarize I  didn’t love this game but it was  amusing and I’d definitely like to see a full retail version of this.

(Note: This section does not affect the final ranking for the game at all!)

Overall Ranking, 36.5/45 (or 8/10): Good game, not perfect. It could be a little harder, but if you like puzzle games and just wanting to get something with your DSi points this game is probably for you!

Is it worth 800 points: Ok, so 800 points means 8 dollars. It’s all up to a matter of opinion. Since I myself am not a hardcore puzzle fan I’d probably pay 500 points for this. If you do enjoy slow moving, think it through, page flipping goodness then you’d probably pay 800 points for this game! So to summarize I myself would pay 500 points at most, but that’s just me!

(This is like the “My Opinion” part this is mostly opinion and should only be taken as a suggestion!)

Anyways that’s my review for Mighty Flips Champs! Stay tuned for more DSiWare reviews and other blog posts from me! Thanks you for reading and bye!