The beauty of mini-games are that they usually pack an immediate punch and leave you wanting more because of their quickfire nature. The best mini-games offer something relatively simple and either build up complexity or offer a challenge from an external force like a time limit or another player. What happens if you stretch a mini-game out of that succinct time frame restraint? You’ll get something similar to Mr Goofer’s Mini Game Arcade Party!
Mr Goofer is a single-player collection of 25 mini-games to tackle. You unlock them one at a time by reaching a certain score, survival time limit or specific point in the mini-game to get a merit. The entire game takes place in a weird 80’s CRT Five Nights At Freddie’s feeling environment, but rest assured there are no horror elements to the game at all. It is just a retro aesthetic choice and it serves the game well. The mini-games are introduced by a Barbershop main theme which is one of the highlights and from there you select your mini-game, check the controls (some are keyboard, some are mouse) and tap up the individual online leaderboard most games have before diving in.
One of Mr Goofer’s strengths is the diversity of mini-games on offer. Some are like early 80’s retro arcade games like smashing all the glass panes in a 2D platformer before the timer runs out. Another has you as a pig with wings floating up to heaven, whilst as a toad you swim to the bottom of the sea to get treasure. Both games are extensions of Frogger – avoiding enemies crossing your path. Elsewhere Breakout gets a barebones revisit, as does pinball and air hockey. There is a nifty and tense version of Pacman which doesn’t have ghosts chasing you but instead traffic moving around the map for you to avoid. The other side of Mr Goofer leans towards country fate and carnival games. These have things like whack a mole and pachinko to dive into. The variety is strong and many games are merged into one mini-game challenge. For example, the whack-a-mole turns into a match 3 gem game when you pass a certain score threshold. These are moments when Mr Goofer feels interesting and engaging.
My main issue is that the actually scores you need to achieve take a long time to reach and gameplay is too simplistic to keep you interested in reaching them. Some games like a funky “spot the odd colour” psychedelic eye puzzle game have no time limit, no second player, and no challenge. Unless you fat finger an option you can’t really fail so you’ll be slogging through finding the odd colour out 100 times, only to unlock the next game. There are too many mini-games that seem to just go on forever without any ramping up of difficulty. My high score was often when I got bored enough to stop and give up – not when my skill ran out. Some games also feel wooden, especially the pinball mini-game which is incredibly inconsistent with its ball physics. There’s another game where you play as a chef moving cakes from a tent to a hungry patron. The way the level is set up means that if you need to carry a cake from the right-hand side of the screen, the mouse controls purposefully move over an obstacle you have to avoid and so your chef falls over and dies. There are a few instances of level design and controls combatting each other that bring down the overall experience.
I like the overall idea of Mr Goofer’s Mini Game Arcade Party but by halfway through the game, I was exhausted and bored. There are a few gems in here but too much of the game is click this or press that 100 or 200 times without challenge to unlock the next thing. That didn’t gel with me at all and so I’d only recommend this to ardent mini-game fans. If you are interested in single-player mini-game challenges Super 56 would be my recommendation.
Review code provided by the developer. Mr Goofer’s Mini Game Arcade Party! is out now.
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