Here’s the thing: while I’m not averse to playing real-time strategy games and have actually been known to enjoy some now and then in the past, they are not my primary genre of interest. So, having said that, going into this game I was already not overly familiar with what to expect other than having seen a couple quick gameplay videos. As someone who isn’t big on the genre, my opinion is hopefully as unbiased and objective as possible, but as always your mileage may vary.

Mushroom Wars is a real-time strategy game that dates back to October 2009 on the PlayStation 3. In the seven years since its initial debut, it’s been ported to iOS, Android, and now the PC on Steam. In the game, you control a population of humanoids that live in mushroom villages and your objective is to take control of all other points of interest on a given map. Each village can support a certain number of soldiers (which grow with each in-game “tick” of time) and once the village’s limit is reached the player will either need to send troops to another location or “upgrade” the town (raising its maximum limit at the cost of some troops to enact the upgrade). In general, victory will be obtained by capturing multiple locations, building up a large population of troops, and overwhelming the enemy bases.

The game features a campaign mode (with a light story) that gradually increases in difficulty and teaches you all the ins and outs of the game, a skirmish mode in which you can try any one-off scenario of the game, and an online multiplayer mode. In most cases, the matches are very swift and over in just a few minutes, so it’s the type of game you’ll likely play in small bursts rather than for longer periods of time.

Graphically, the game is pretty simplistic. Really, for a game that they had seven years to upgrade for the PC port, I found that it was really just way too underwhelming. The game doesn’t look or feel that much different from what I’ve seen of the 2009 release and this is really disappointing to me. The in-game music, while catchy in one or two songs, is otherwise quite limited. While the tunes are actually pretty good, there are only a couple of them and so they eventually start to grate on you.

Some have said that the game is like a poor-man’s version of Starcraft. That assessment may be a little on the harsh side, but my general opinion of the game is that it’s far too simplistic and didn’t really capture my interest when playing it. Given its $9.99 USD asking price on Steam, I’d be hard-pressed to recommend this game to anyone. If you’re looking for a solid RTS game to try out, there are enough higher-quality games on Steam I’d say you should look at first. However, if you really are intrigued by this one, you may want to take a shot at it anyway. Otherwise, at best I’d say you should just wait until it’s on a deep discount on Steam.

Ultimately, I’d say this game rates in as:

“MEH”