Murtop (Switch)

Dig Dug is one of my favorite classic arcade games and Bomberman, despite my misgivings about it before starting The Game Hoard, has proven to be an enjoyable series after I better explored the franchise. The reason this information is relevant to a Switch game about a bunny is that Murtop is unapologetically inspired by these two games I’m quite familiar with, this mix featuring the same focus on digging down into the dirt as Dig Dug while your method of attacking the creatures you find involves cartoon bombs with cross-shaped explosions like in Bomberman. With Murtop so closely adhering to a classic arcade game aesthetic as well, it doesn’t feel like it has too strong of a unique identity all its own, but there is hope for its idea of blending together two successful game types as long as it is executed well.

 

Murtop stars a rabbit named Murti who looks like a fairly realistic version of the animal, but she does have the less than normal ability to drop a bomb behind her that she can use to defeat the moles she finds underground. In a typical stage, Murti stands on the surface, layers of dirt below featuring some pre-existing tunnels where moles lurk. While the game’s store page claims these moles are eager to chomp down on the carrots that can also be found underground, they make no effort to go towards them and the purpose of the carrots is simply to provide a boost to your score if you grab them. With high score being the main goal, the player takes control of Murti to plunge down into the dirt, the goal of a level being to blast every enemy underground so you can move onto the next stage. The cross-shaped blast from a bomb will extend out as far as there is open space in that direction to go and can hurt Murti, but it can also instantly take out any mole caught in the explosion, the player earning extra point multipliers if they can hit multiple moles with one explosion.

There are three types of moles to worry about in Murtop. The most common is a pinkish one wielding a shovel that will patrol a simple route until you get too close, the mole becoming agitated once it’s aware of you and giving chase until it runs out of steam. The angry moles in hardhats on the other hand are always content to march across the same horizontal row, similarly lethal to the touch but also packing the ability to hurl a rock projectile your way if they spot you. These two moles will make up what dangers you find beneath the surface, and since they prefer to travel in straight lines, it’s not normally too hard to line up a bomb kill. You enter their patrol route, drop a bomb, and quickly turn a corner so you don’t accidentally blow yourself up as well. The fact the common pink mole will try to chase you can sometimes complicate things if you’re too close when you attempt the quick drop and there is at least the minor hiccup that you drop a bomb behind you means sometimes positioning yourself properly involves first moving into danger so you can drop the explosive as you flee, but it’s still not too difficult to deal with these two mole types. Most levels in Murtop feature only these two enemies, their number and positioning changing around but there are certainly many stages that will be a cakewalk because of your low commitment method of mole extermination.

 

Luckily, our third mole type adds some more unpredictable and challenging danger to the affair. A goggle-wearing mustachioed mole will appear on the surface in some stages, completely immune to your bombs since you can’t place them up above and their explosion ends just before it could reach him. This mole is only there to complicate things, dropping large rolling rocks that will start digging tunnels of their own and seem to somewhat intelligently try to roll over towards you to try and flatten you. The stages that feature this fiend also tend to have plenty of the other moles beneath the earth, meaning not only do you have this more dangerous and mobile threat frequently active as you try to do your work, but it becomes hard to successfully outmaneuver it without running into the paths of other moles. This rock-rolling mole ends up a vital part of ensuring the game doesn’t become too easy once you realize how simple it is to safely place bombs and retreat, and he appears with decent enough regularity that you can quickly move through simpler levels and then face a stage with a little more oomph.

 

Every level in Murtop is timed, a 60 second clock ticking down after you dig down into the dirt. Murti will immediately die the moment the clock hits zero, and while you get a few lives per credit, a revival will not stop the clock despite putting you back at the very top of the screen-sized level. The screen size is kept in check by the arcade presentation, the tall viewing area meaning there isn’t an overwhelming amount of dirt to tunnel through while the sides of the screen have cute art of the moles you’re up against to fill what could have been empty space. This reasonable size does also mean the time limit is perhaps a bit too reasonable too. Murtop features 256 levels, most of which are just mild iterations on the five formats you see at the start, and despite playing through all of them, I only ever died to the timer running out once. Perhaps a more cautious player might hit this limit more often and the levels with the rolling stones might lead to some players panicking to the point they waste time, but lives aren’t necessarily a limited resource. You can earn extras at certain point thresholds, but Murtop on Nintendo Switch lets you continue from losing all your lives with no penalties besides resetting your score.

If you are looking to top your console’s personal leaderboards, there is some value in trying to survive as long as possible, and perhaps that could lead to more trepidation as you don’t want to slip up and have your score reset despite the otherwise pain-free continues. It at least serves as a nice short-term goal, the player wanting to outperform their last chart topper and the overall similarity between the stages means you can just keep pushing forward without worrying you missed out on some stage-specific point opportunities. As mentioned though, Murtop technically has 256 unique levels, and with the Switch eShop page challenging you to reach the end to see a kill screen, it encourages continued play over a long period. The kill screen does feel like more of a cute reference to arcade games like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong that famously become unplayable after you’ve looped through the repeated stages to the point the code creates a glitched level, but it’s an underwhelming end if you do pursue it so it is probably wiser to focus on the score challenge first and foremost and only bother with pursuing the kill screen if you just so happen to continue from game overs often enough that it shows up.

 

There are a few more little elements of Murtop that lightly impact play. There are boulders sitting stuck in the earth that Murti can knock loose if you run beneath them, the boulders plummeting down and crushing any moles in the column of open space they sat above. Having this alternate method of extermination means sometimes you might consider something beyond the basic bomb trick and there are definitely times it is the safer and more effective option. Bonus stages also appear with decent regularity, these taking on a new form of play where instead of looking underground, you now mostly see the night sky above. Carrots and rocks are raining down from above, the player hopping across the grass to try and grab the carrots without getting crushed by any stones. The bonus ends when the timer is up but can also immediately end the moment a rock squashes you, the extra points for carrots grabbed lost if you don’t make it to the end. You won’t lose a life though, and it does feel like the bonus levels break up the levels in a helpful way. A decent flow of the super easy stages with pink moles, the mildly more difficult ones that introduce hardhat moles, and then the legitimately challenging stages with the rolling boulders will have a bonus level follow before the cycle repeats, the rise and fall meaning you won’t need to always stay on your toes to survive. More time should have been spent with levels that require good movement, reflexes, and adaptability to make a long term commitment to playing Murtop more engaging, but the structure at least helps the game avoid being stressful.

THE VERDICT: Murtop imitates old arcade sensibilities and misses out on its chance to be more because of it. The minor changes to repeated stage designs make continuous play in Murtop feel a bit homogeneous, but the levels with the goggle-wearing moles inject some much needed energy that makes earning and holding onto a high score an actual challenge. The balance between easy stages and difficult ones is off though, likely because your explosives are so easy to use to clear out your subterranean foes, but the game does move at a quick enough pace that you can easily blitz the basic stages and take on the ones with some more tangible and exciting danger.

 

And so, I give Murtop for Nintendo Switch…

An OKAY rating. The obvious question arises on why I rated Murtop lower than Dig Dug, and that comes down to how you interact with your enemies. Dig Dug requires you to face them and pump them up to bursting, leaving you vulnerable and requiring at least some proximity to the monster you want to kill. Murtop’s bomb dropping is a bit too non-committal though, the player usually able to avoid their own attack by moving only one space horizontally and one vertically. The underground isn’t always so accommodating of course, the reason the rock rolling moles really stand out as a threat is because they add a danger you can’t always easily account for. However, the other moles will just dutifully march in a line or chase behind you despite Murti being fast enough to always outpace them. When a level is packed you can at least have intersecting tunnels to complicate things and boulders can be barriers to your movement as well, so there are some simpler levels that still pack a bit of punch when things line up well. However, if Murtop was going to allow easy continues and even encourage you to try and beat them all, it might have benefited from taking some inspiration from another classic arcade game: Bubble Bobble. Bubble Bobble has a few issues itself, but it packed in 100 levels with unique and distinct designs. Only coming out a few years after Dig Dug, it’s not like paying homage to it lessens the old arcade feel, but at least Murtop’s speedy stages mean you’re quickly moving forward and building up score feels like a speedy enough process that going for a new record feels attainable and a decent enough reason to press on even after a game over.

 

Murtop does have a version that runs in a standard arcade machine, and with a typical credit system rather than just a cost-free implementation of continues as seen in this Switch release, I can see it finding decent footing. You can make it a good distance on one credit without taking up too much of the cabinet’s time for free and seeing repeated levels feels less egregious when it’s not as expected you’ll keep playing. It feels like the brief arcade experience will likely leave a better impression, but that doesn’t change the fact that Murtop needed to design around its bomb mechanic better. Murtop will consistently deliver you some decent play, but this retro game blend would have needed to more strongly intertwine the ideas it borrowed if it wanted to be more than a passing fancy.