Game Soup (PC)
The WarioWare series’s concept of microgames is one with a lot of potential, so much so that it seems like more game developers would attempt their own twists on the idea. Microgames are minigames that the player only has a few seconds to complete, their design being incredibly simple and usually easy to complete but they are presented so quickly and with so little time to react that the challenge comes from immediately keening what you need to do and executing it before the short timer runs out. Game Soup continues that concept in its own version of the microgame formula, and while it doesn’t really stray from WarioWare’s concept of it or try anything new with it, it’s still got the level of understanding necessary to make such a game design interesting.
Game Soup contains 45 different microgames as part of its design, but an interesting angle becomes apparent as you begin to play. Many of Game Soup’s minigames are based on other famous video games spanning the history of the medium. While it’s usually no surprise to see a game referencing the big names like Mario, microgames in Game Soup feature minigames that deliberately invoke the likes of Minecraft, Skyrim, Doom, Undertale, and more. Some of the microgames are instead parodies of broader genres like ones pulling on the mechanics of role-playing games and visual novels, and others like a game based on Sonic the Hedgehog trend incredibly close to looking like their inspirations. Since these longer game experiences are being condensed down into referential microgames, they need to get their task across quickly, which they manage to do fairly well even if you don’t recognize the game being parodied. Besides the fact many of these are parodies, there really isn’t a cohesive theme to the kind of quick tasks you’ll encounter. One second you’re trying to guide a fast moving wedding ring to a finger, then you’re catching fish falling down a waterfall as a cat, and then you’re a specter trying to escape a television set. Despite running a wide range of concepts, the microgames do mostly adhere to a single visual aesthetic, the game featuring bright cartoon designs with solid colors even when it’s making references to other titles that usually have their own art styles.
The experience is held together by the simplicity of play no matter which microgame randomly pops up. No matter which mode you pick, you’ll be presented a sequence of different microgames, the game ensuring that there are no repeats in a single play session unless you’re playing Endless mode. With the few seconds you have to complete a game, the design needs to be pretty easy to understand at a glance, and Game Soup uses the same methods WarioWare did to make the microgames approachable. At the start of a game, words will appear on the screen to tell you what you need to do to win. Most of them are single words like “Kick!” that will immediately give you a good idea what you’re meant to be doing, and on the bottom of the screen are a few colored bars that disappear to show time ticking down. Complete the microgame properly in time and you’ll succeed, and for the most part, many of the microgames can be reacted to well enough on your first encounter with them. A few exceptions exist, things like a game where you need to have a tiger jump over a gap deceptive in that you hold down the button to set its jump path rather than just pressing it, but failing it once usually gives you the idea of how to play it when you see it crop up during another play session. Most of the actions also pull on very basic controls, the player only needing to worry about one action button as well as the movement controls. Your options are limited by design, so it’s usually pretty easy to figure out what to do when thrown into a scenario with very few objects, very few actions possible, and an immediate instruction to contextualize it all.
As you complete more and more microgames in a single run of Game Soup though, things begin to change. Speed will begin to increase, the player needing to be fast on their feet to react to games that are getting much shorter or have their windows of success lessened. Some games, like the ones that only require you to press the action button repeatedly to win, are a relief during these sections, but then a microgame like the one where you need to destroy all the valuable china in a room full of shelves can be very difficult to complete in time, a single wrong movement dooming you to failure. You’ll come to dread the appearance of the harder ones here and relish the appearance of the easy ones, but the balance tips well enough that practice and familiarity will make it possible to beat these at even ridiculous speeds. However, some games have different length timers than others, making it a little hard to get a feel for the time limits, especially since the color bars are a somewhat abstract way of representing time. Some games also get harder as they appear later in the microgame rotation, games about fighting off monsters featuring more enemies to deal with for example. Still, if you can manage to clear enough of the microgames without losing the four hearts you’re given to act as your life bar, you will make it to a boss fight game, this one lasting either as long as you can survive or until you’ve won. The boss battle game actually draws on the hearts that allowed you to fail a few microgames along the way, so while you can push on after losing a game or two, it makes the final confrontation harder as you can take fewer hits. In essence, Game Soup becomes a game about training yourself up to react to its microgames quickly enough to hold onto that health for the final fight, the speed of play making it easy to hop back in after failures or restart if you don’t like your chances.
Game Soup’s 45 microgames and one boss game make for a fairly good batch of quick experiences that vary enough in difficulty to give the player both moments of relief and moments of dread, but there is one area the game is somewhat lacking in, and that’s the modes on offer. Game Soup begins with you only able to play the normal mode, microgames served up to you as bowls of soup in a ramen store setting that follows the mentioned design of speeding up before facing the boss. You won’t experience every microgame in a run of this, but once you beat it, you unlock a faster mode of it and Endless, Endless making sure to loop through every game before it begins having you play any single one again in a run. However, if you beat the faster mode, you just get faster and faster modes to play. This is, in essence, difficulty settings for the main experience, but it also feels like things aren’t changing too much between modes. There isn’t, for example, a mode to just play a single microgame repeatedly to try and hone your skill at it, nor is there anything akin to a multiplayer mode or even anything with a strong gimmick to recontextualize the game. Game Soup does do its microgame design fairly well, even making the parody games feel less like playing the original game and more a new microgame design evoking it save some examples like Snake and Pong just being present in their original forms. However, a few more ways to play these games would give the experience more longevity and variety to be sure.
THE VERDICT: Game Soup does an admirable job of taking WarioWare’s microgame concept and adding its own personal flair to the experience. Whether it’s making homages to famous video games or coming up with new minigame ideas, Game Soup presents its quick little games in a rather cohesive style, coming up with tasks that feel distinct from their inspirations. Rather than its references being hokey, it makes them an interesting component of its easily understood reflexive play, but little variety between the different game modes means its content doesn’t have much room to grow even if the increased speed and difficulty keeps things challenging. The microgame design is strong despite their rapid nature though, and besides the boss minigame, the content keeps its focus on quick fun so it remains enjoyable despite having no major shifts in how the games are presented.
And so, I give Game Soup for PC…
A GOOD rating. Game Soup is pretty much a continuation of the WarioWare style of design, presenting itself with its own artistic bent but not really advancing the style much further. Still, microgames are fun for their push to act quickly and learn the games you’ll be up against, kept fresh by the increase in speed and difficulty as you move later and later into whatever mode you’re experiencing the game through. The game parodies are fun to see and still good to play even if you don’t recognize what they’re going for, but on the whole, this is sort of a game that combines the work of other games to make its content. It’s more microgame fun, but not much sets it apart and even WarioWare manages to beat it out in content and modes that shift up the style you experience the content through. That doesn’t make Game Soup worse in any way, but its hard not to see the potential of adding more meat to this broth.
Game Soup knows what its doing and does it pretty well. It’s full of fun references and quick, reflexive tasks that are easy to understand and complete. Speed and style keep it from being let down by a lack of different modes, and while it may not be hearty enough to be the main course, it’s still a tasty way to have some microgame fun.