Mine Fu

"Mine Fu" is a fun and rather challenging little puzzler. You can blow up tiles - I mean, solve puzzles - defeat evil monsters as you progress from stage to stage in order to slay the 7 evil demons who have been freed once again. In 9 levels.

It combines cheesiness, ridulousness and difficulty into a nice parody puzzler of all that ninja crap that is called "Mine Fu". That may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I certainly liked the mixture. Although it was a little bit sad that there were no scenes inbetween appart from boss-appearances.


This game introduces different types of puzzles and adds a little bit of randomness and skill-factor into it.
It starts off rather easy and simple, but soon becomes quite a challenge.



Your basic means of procceeding is over these cement tiles. Since you are a sneaky sneak and since stealth is your top priority, you cannot allow anyone to follow your path. Blowing it up is absolutely necessary. I mean it.

Since you can't step back on a minefield, you can only step over them once. What seemed easy at first, did become quite challenging at times after the art of "jumping" was introduced. You can get the hang of it quickly, though, as there are some basic strategies you can apply. Sometimes stones will block tiles which you can move around with your sword. As you can reset the stage anytime, this system works quite well.

Inbetween or additionally to these run-puzzles are enemies. Some shoot arrows, some surprise you by appearing right in front of you, and some are zombies. God, I hate those zombies. This must be the first time zombies are respectable enemies. Can you believe that? Although more annoying fits better, but on to that later.
You can only proceed once those pesky beasts are dead (visible or not), or at least dead at the moment.

There are also a couple of items, name "shuriken", "log", "superslow flamethrowing supersword upgrade" and "grapple". Extra lives and a stage reset (you don't want that) can also be found.
I didn't really find any use for the grapple aside from the instance it was introduced, nor did I find any use for the log at all. The log protects you from any damage for a short period of time, but makes you immobile. Which in 99% of cases will mean : if you can take damage here now, you will later, too. In case of zombies (when you forget you have one) it means you will die the moment it swaps back. As you die instantly from anything, there isn't much it can help you with.
You have a sword at use to strike and cannot use it until you used the item you picked up.

Your general movement needs to be precise - and it is - but it makes running a little bit slow and clunky. You will not directly move into the direction you choose, tapping the keys a little bit longer will. Otherwise you face directions.
The fact I played Densetsu no Kusoge not too long ago made me kill myself a couple of times because I was used to using "up" for any advance into the direction you face.
This is fortunately not the case, but it still slows you down and makes it nigh impossible to face into a different direction while slashing fast enough should an enemy (well, zombies. all else are okay more or less) approach you.
Luckily, most enemies follow set paths, so it is more about timing than anything else. Or they are fixed and need to be taken out with items. Zombies do neither, but they only appear in one level. We gotta be thankful for that.

The difficulty progression is fairly decent. It gets gradually harder, although it spikes at 8 and turns to easy in 9 (except for the first boss there). That was rather unfortunate, as the last area lost much of its impact, but whatever.

Bosses are generally very easy. There are some thougher ones inbetween, but you can save before any boss, so that is fine. It's a little bit annoying that the last boss of all of them is the one that requires luck and nothing else. It's very easy, but you can die instantly if you're unlucky.

The gameplay is a little bit unfair at times, pretty difficult and pretty varied. The biggest difficulties you face offer only a small reward as they are either thanks to clunky fighting or luck, still, it's quite some fun.



Thus begins the quest of slaying evil!

What really contributes to the game is the great 8-bit music. There are some really catchy tunes that fit the gameworld (like the ship, or the last dungeon), but are also enjoyable on their own. The game is visually appealing for what it offers as extra. Both world-map and mouse-drawn scenes are quite nice to look at. The general stages are kept as simple as they need to be.
The scenes inbetween are stupidly hilarious and a really nice addition.
The game doesn't take itself serious at all, and makes reference to all kinds of standard boss-ranting and senseless plots.

It's a shame that there is no real aftermath. More banter inbetween would've been appreciated as well.


In short:

"Mine Fu" has a nice touch of humour, challenging puzzles, but suffers from minor balancing and gameplay glitches (you can die twice at once, for example).
But it remains a nice little and appealing game. Fans of puzzler might want to give this one a go.