Act: Miner Madness [by Mercury Effects]

Game Review: Miner Madness
Release Date: June 16, 2005
Developer: Mercury Effects
Genre: Action
System Requirements: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, 1.00 GHz, 128 RAM
Players: 1
Price: $19.95
Download Now!


Does Miner Madness seem familiar to you at all? Could it be because shareware and freeware games have a seemingly endless love affair with the mine theme? Could it be because the simple top down arena navigation is highly reminiscent of Bomberman? Maybe it’s because the gameplay is basically a real-time version of Battleship?

In Miner Madness you are a beleaguered miner who, shockingly, gets trapped in a mine and must, by going ever-deeper into the mine, escape. Logical problems (going down to get topside) aside, this is a time-honored paradigm for a game and should make gamers feel right at home.

But Miner Madness doesn’t want you to feel too much at home because then, really, why would you fork over $20 to play the game? The basic gameplay is simple. You move around the screen and dig, trying to unearth a large (yet less point-worthy) escape from the level, or a much smaller and harder to find (albeit more valuable) exit. There are no enemies, per se, but you find yourself contending with rifts in the floor that may open up unexpectedly, or spouts of water or oil that could send you rocketing across the level away from your objective or even into an errant hole in the ground. Moles surface from time to time to either create holes that cause the level to become unstable or just pop up to be smacked, whack-a-mole style.

So far, we’re still on solid ground. But now we get to the features Miner Madness uses to spice things up a bit—and where we hit many of the games major snags. Your hapless miner is not without his arsenal. There are planks and bags of concrete to stop up spouts of liquid or cover up chasms. There are also super pick-axes which will do the digging across the length of the screen for you in one go, not to mention bundles of dynamite to detonate stalagmites and fuses to explode the powder kegs that are lying around in the mine. There are also over 100 “artifacts” (read: random items) that can be found during the course of the game. This is a way to keep the gamer coming back for more, as there’s no way to collect them all on one play-through, but it may be impossible to collect them all on a dozen play-throughs.

Levels are randomly generated and timed, and the time limit shrinks as your miner advances ever deeper. This means that more and more time is focused on simply surviving, rather than getting all the items you can grab. Random generation also prevents you from planning on making a beeline to “X” item on “Y” level, because it will never be in the same place twice. After a single run, I found myself with 23 artifacts which I can view in the Museum Gallery mode. Much to my chagrin however, I discovered that these artifacts add nothing to the game beyond a small picture, a small description and another notch on the total tally of items collected. This means that replaying to get the items is only for die-hard fans. And replay you will since Miner Madness clocks in at a terse 40 levels and then it’s back to the start with you. You’ll keep all your artifacts, but you’re rehashing the same gameplay immediately. You’re better off always repeating the early levels as those are the only ones where item discovery is really possible. Each time your miner runs out of lives, the game gives you the option to save your game, which will keep your items and bump you back to level one, but most gamers will learn to save at the start of every level rather than start over each time they meet their untimely doom.

Graphics: 6
The artwork in Miner Madness has a nice amateur cartoon feel to it. The backgrounds are made up of 3D bats (who just seem to be there to take up screen space), boulders and stalagmites, and the cartoon elements seem at odds with the more high-tech backgrounds. It makes the game feel as if the two aspects were done separately from one another and combined almost as an afterthought. It’s fun to have an intro “movie” to watch, but it took so long to progress in spots that I was left wondering if my machine had locked up.

Sound: 8
The music in Miner Madness is a kind of catchy piece of electronic groove. There are a few tracks and, while they sound similar, they get switched up enough that it’s not likely you’ll tire of them too quickly. The levels aren’t long enough to let a track get old. The end level music actually had me grooving around in my seat as I watched my point totals rack up. All the sound effects are of a good quality, so there are no complaints there.

Gameplay: 6
There’s virtually nothing to controlling your miner in Miner Madness, but that’s what makes it so unfortunate that there are still issues with moving him around. Your miner doesn’t stop on a dime so, from time to time, you’ll be pretty sure you’ve let go of your arrow key when you needed to and, voila, into a pit with you! This is a pretty frustrating occurrence. Gameplay and movement are controlled entirely with the keyboard, yet when it comes time to switch to a new super-item or place your fuse on a powder keg, it’s time to grab that mouse and start clicking. When time is of the essence, as it is in Miner Madness, this kind of peripheral juggling is pretty heinous. And speaking of time—the shift key is used to dig where your miner is standing. However, just hitting the shift key once won’t do it. You need to dig twice on every spot to open up a hole deep enough to tell what’s under the surface. Why? Beats me. It adds nothing to your gameplay other than that it slows things down while the clock speeds it all up.

Value: 6
At $19.95, Miner Madness is towards the high end of game pricing, for somewhere at the middle of game technology. Also, at 40 levels, Miner Madness is a pretty short ride. A jaunt through all 40 levels took me about 90 minutes and, while I went back to try and get more artifacts, I have a hard time seeing myself go back more than twice making this a three hour tour. True, randomized levels will keep things fresh, but all it dictates is the location of the exit and the artifacts.

Concept: 8
I have to give Miner Madness credit for the game’s basic principals. The artifact collection concept is a cool one (though I’d love it if the artifacts actually boosted gameplay at all) and there are plenty of items to mess with. The ticking clock and the increasingly unstable mine floor keep the player on their toes and there are enough ghosts and moles and other random elements to keep things interesting.

Fun: 6
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed playing Miner Madness. I did my 90 minutes of play pretty much all at once because I wanted to get my man out of that hole! I did and I was proud of myself and then I found myself looking around for what else I could do with my afternoon. I’ll pick it back up, for sure, but not while the first run through is fresh in my mind.

Overall: 6
Miner Madness is a fun game, though it is short and has a somewhat frustrating control scheme. Replay elements are also basically add-ons, and aren’t really integrated into the gameplay, making them, at best, a sketchy reason to keep playing. Still, it’s pretty exhilarating racing to get your man out of the hole.


Added: September 9th 2005
Reviewer: Michael Scarpelli
Score:
Hits: 2713
Language: english