Developed by You Run Ltd, DigitalMania SA and published by Bonus Stage Publishing, Warshmallows is a new platform shooter where you strap up in one of the marshmallows and shoot your enemies to be the last one standing. Featuring colorful visuals and a brilliant level design, Warshmallows brings a unique take on the closed arena shooters or fighting titles such as Super Smash Bros, Brawlhalla, and more. Instead of focusing on just one mechanic, Marshmallows combines a host of mechanics and presents them in a single package. This is our review of Warshmallows in which we shoot some enemies and cause some mayhem as marshmallows.
Warshmallows is played in decently sized, tight platforming levels where you have plenty of space to move around. You have different platforms throughout each level to move around to and in order to avoid your enemies and sometimes gain an advantage over them as well, you will need to make good use of the whole level. Since the platforms are of various heights, you have different movement options that certainly give you enough mobility to move around easily. For instance, you can triple jump in the game which allows you to reach higher platforms and if that is not an option, you have your very own jetpack to fly around the level and avoid enemy fire. However, for the most effective platforming and dodging, you must combine all of these mechanics together.
You have a limited amount of ammo that you can shoot at your enemies before you must find and restock on ammo. Each level comes with various challenges, so you have to watch out for these challenges as well while moving around. Apart from shooting enemies, Warshmallows also allows you to chuck your enemies out of the arena with a powerful bat swing so if you run out of ammo, you can try to get close to your enemies and land a powerful bat swing in their face which will cause them to fly away and if you are lucky with your hit, you can also knock them off the arena quickly eliminating them. Even if you get hit with the enemy’s bullets, you can still move around in your encapsulated form to block them and their shots. You also have your special ability that can turn the match in your favor if used effectively.
Probably the most prominent feature of Warsmallows is the bullet time which slows down the game when a bullet is near a player. However, since this is an online game and follows the 4v4 criteria, this leads to some interesting moments in the game. I found this particular mechanic a loose cannon in the game because sometimes I loved it and sometimes, I found it to be broken. This varied from scenario to scenario. For most of the cases, I was easily dodging any bullets that came at me with the bullet time and these moments looked really good in match replays. Match replays are one of my favorite things to watch in the game as it allowed me to get better and learn from my mistakes that I made in that particular level if I lost the game.
However, the real confusion begins when the bullet time is being activated for someone other than you and in such confusion, if you are not careful, you end in places quickly where you do not want to be, such as another player’s shots that you could have easily avoided if the time would not have slowed down for you. Quite often, if the bullet time was not activated because of me, I would tend to just leave the controls and it would cause my character to suddenly then fall down or move too far from where I initially anticipated it to reach before the bullet time kicked in. This takes some time to get used to, but it still annoys you in certain cases.
For me, the learning curve was not that high and as far as I can remember, I even won the very first online match I played against online players. After the introduction, it is really simple to directly jump online in matches and start winning. There are no complex mechanics to master but obviously, practice makes you perfect, and in Warshmallows, jumping in online matches is the best form of practice. If you are good at platformers, you will get the hang of the controls pretty quickly and soon you would start racking up wins and some kills as well. There are multiple modes in which you can play the game depending on your preference.
The Online mode is the most common mode where you will join three other players to fight with each other and the last remaining player is termed the winner. There are five rounds and the first player to secure at least three wins is the winner. For Online with Friends and Couch Party, you can choose from various modes such as 2v2, Couch vs Couch, and even Free-For-All for the ultimate mayhem. The more players in a game, the more fun it is since you are trying to avoid fires from multiple directions. Couple that with various weapons and you have a really tough game to win.
At this point, Warshmallows offers a limited amount of customizability in the game. While there is no story or any other sort of progression in the game, one thing that you can look forward to is visual customization and that can be done easily with the help of different weapons and skin unlockables in the game. There are multiple colorful Marshmallows to choose from as your player and each comes with its own unique costumes that you can unlock after reaching a certain level. These are just visual customizations however you can unlock and equip different weapons such as a Shotgun and a Sniper Rifle, each offering a different way of shooting at your enemies. In the future, the game may get additional weapons as well as weapons such as an RPG will certainly make the game more fun.
While technically, the game ran really well for me and I did not notice any audio or video hiccups with the game, one problem that I did notice with the game was that although the game supports gamepad, for me, it simply stopped working in the middle and I had to switch back to mouse and keyboard for playing the game. I used an Xbox One controller connected wirelessly during my review play sessions and while it worked, it worked flawlessly but suddenly it would just stop responding completely and I had to switch back to the keyboard and mouse for playing the game.
Since Warshmallows is an online game whether it is with strangers or friends, you need other players to play the game with. Even for local games, you need some people to play the game with and if you do not have anyone to play the game with, that could be a problem with Warshmallows at this point because there is not a very huge player base playing the game. Sometimes you might not find anyone to play the game with and sometimes you might not find anyone to play the game with, so it is a bargain with its current player base. I am sure that some dedicated players are playing the game mostly but there is no confirmation that they will be always online when you are looking for a match.
Online player base stats reveal that players are mostly online during certain times of the day but if this continues, the player base might not be enough to attract new players if they are unable to join any games. During its launch week, I do not remember a single time when I had to wait for too long for a match however, the current player base seems to have declined in just over a week so the developers will need to keep the game alive with daily challenges with rewards or even a battle pass sort of regularly updated content to keep the player base interested and make them return to the title. At this point, I did notice a weekly challenge rewarding me with some coins but that was it.
Final Verdict:
Warshmallows is a unique take on the platformer fighter and instead of sticking to melee attacks or special characters, you fight with Marshmallows equipped with guns. The concept is fun however for me, the bullet-time is sort of a letdown as most of the time, it made me feel like I was playing a game with online lag. It had its fun bits however a little bit of tweaking would perhaps make it more effective. I had a fun time blasting my enemies in the game while listening to the funky soundtrack. I can easily recommend this game if you want a simple platforming fighter with plenty of time to kill. If you love playing titles like Brawlhalla, Super Smash Bros., or even traditional shooters where you can slow down time to avoid bullets, Warshmallows will certainly keep you occupied for plenty of hours without a doubt.
Final Score: 7.5/10
