Cut out preservatives, or die trying in Mold on Pizza

Rarely are we conscious of it, but on every slice of pizza, there is a war raging. The cheese and crust are the battlefield, and preservatives are the staunch defenders of a comfort food constantly under siege by bacteria and fungi. In Mold on Pizza, you’re the mold, and the enemies are the preservatives trying to protect the pizza from your fungal onslaught. It’s a tower offense game, so the mechanics are familiar if slightly inverted. With a cute aesthetic and food-inspired spin, all that’s left is to see how well the Korean-based BTNcafe’s game delivers.

Visually Appetizing

The first thing that will catch your eye is undoubtedly the pizza-inspired visuals. The levels, stage select board, and icons are all representations of pizza, albeit with occasionally interesting toppings. If toppings like broccoli seem a bit jarring, remember, Korea is the Wild West of pizza.

Each stage uses different toppings to create slight variations, dividing the stages into multiple lanes or creating other obstacles. Before starting each level, you choose which mold you want to take into battle with you. This is easily likened to something like Plants vs. Zombies.

You’re introduced to basic mold, followed by explosive mold, and a pink ranged mold early on. While I’m no mold expert, I think I can say this aspect of the game relies a bit on creative biology. The mold and preservatives themselves are definitely stylized, and the former is particularly reminiscent of germs depictions in other games. The “preservatives” look like different takes on salt, which, actually makes sense.

Gameplay

For your mold to thrive you need moisture, which functions essentially the same as sunlight in PopCap’s standard-setting plant themed tower defense series, but there are a few differences. You start with a limited area conducive to your growth. Once you’ve been beaten back by the preservatives, the cheese terrain will be too dry to spawn new troops. That sounds ridiculous, but it’s fairly intuitive during gameplay.

You upgrade your abilities by collecting droplets and pickles. The water droplets and pickles are used to purchase upgrades and unlockable perks. Water droplets make sense if you’re trying to grow mold, but pickles might seem out of left field. That is, unless you’ve ever ordered pizza in Korea – because every box of ‘za includes a side of sliced pickles.

Harder to swallow bits

Some levels in Mold on Pizza are really unforgiving. Hesitate for a second and the preservatives will have wiped you out completely. Other mini-games do a poor job of explaining what you’re meant to do – by not explaining at all. This can is forgivable because retrying is little in the way of pain, and the mechanics are largely borrowed from other mobile titles. But frustration can still arise.

Using the characters that you naturally unlock in the game’s progression, Mold on Pizza can demand quite a bit of activity to defeat larger enemies. My thumbs and fingers are well-accustomed to playing games, but I found the number of swipes required to get past certain levels a bit high, actually causing muscle fatigue – which I don’t think I’ve experienced outside of button-mashing mini-games on a console control pad.

Your minions are relatively weak, and you’ll find yourself constantly tapping and dragging them from your mold containers to the board. You’ll also have to tap on hard-earned water if you want your forward march to continue. The cherry tomato on top is that to unleash your molds’ specially abilities, you have to tap them. The result is a lot of tapping, but the game is definitely engaged as a result.

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Verdict

Anyway you slice it, Mold on Pizza brings a reasonable amount of fun, especially to those who may be new to the tower defense genre. The game’s visual style alone may provide enough in the way of novelty to get anyone playing, and there certainly is a lot of depth. You won’t be running out of content anytime soon as you match toppings to mold to upgrade and unlock characters, battle the games dozens of enemy types, and finish what it claims are “about 100” levels. This one could keep you busy for a while.

BTNcafe is definitely servicing the game after its release, so hopefully with user feedback, the small studio will to make minor improvements and add even more polish. Mold on Pizza is available on Google Play and the App Store. The game was reviewed with the Android version, on a Samsung Galaxy Note III.

7/10

Cut out preservatives, or die trying in Mold on Pizza