Legend of Mushroom confuses me. It is, technically, a video game. It is technically a video game that I have played a lot of. But in the grand scheme of things, if the average free to play game is a lure on a fishing line, Legend of Mushroom is made entirely out of hooks. It has no real bait aside from pretty graphics, and the most bare bones of dopamine reward loops. I’ve written about idle games before. Legend of Mushroom is different.
It looks like a game. It feels like a game. But much like John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” the second the flesh peels back, it becomes apparent that what you are dealing with is not of this earth, and would terrify even the devil.
Mechanically, Legend of Mushroom is what you get when you set out to make a Skinner box game, and do the Skinner box part, but forget the game. Every mechanic in the game is accompanied by bells, whistles, and a complete absence of player agency.
There’s a battle system, but you can just have all your skills auto-cast. There’s a gear system, but all gear is from a random lootbox, and after 15 days, I’m still not at a point where anything matters for the gear other then bigger numbers. There’s a pet/skill system, but getting pets and skills is, again, a random lootbox. You can’t really make builds, and the better ones are so much better that there’s no reason to not just slot them in.
And yet, technically, I have “played” this game for 15 days. In that time, I don’t think I’ve made any meaningful decisions about gameplay. Instead, I have just clicked on the things to be clicked, and then watched ads. And then I have watched more ads, to get more things.
Why bother writing about it?
Two reasons. One is the fact that after writing about this sort of game, I tend to stop playing. Writing purges any desire I have to continue. The second is that, as always, these sorts of games have some weird shit going on.
The standard weird shit is that one of the events the game is currently running is an event for spending money. Not too uncommon. But the amounts of money are just plain bonkers, especially for a game with no game play.
The game has another weird system though. It’s referred to in-game as the “Employment” system.
Here’s the UI.
You might now understand why I put those quotes up there. It’s also not really thematically about employment, because I’m unaware of a system of employment in which someone just beats you up, chains you in a basement, and extracts wealth from you until you either break free, or someone else sets you free.
That’s just called slavery. I’m not sure why the cute mushroom game has a system for taking other players as slaves, but is does, so that’s neat.
Conclusion
There is no reason to ever play Legend of Mushroom, and with this post, I am free from its grip. If you for any reason, were tempted to play, don’t. If you were tempted to spend money in Legend of Mushroom, do something more productive with it, like buying drugs, or lottery tickets.
Or setting it on fire.
Or “investing” in crypto.