Smushi Come Home

As a person who loves platformers but doesn’t always have the skill required to successfully navigate all those spiky traps, flurry of arrows and tight jump sequences, Smushi Come Home proved to be a true breath of fresh air. I’ve been longing for a game that is both wholesome as well as stress-free, and Smushi Come Home provided exactly what I needed.

The little mushroom called Smushi gets separated from his mushroomy siblings at the start of the game when a bird kidnaps him and takes him far away from home. Finding himself in a foreign land and not knowing how to get back, he asks for guidance from the various creatures that he meets in ohis journey. They will point him in the right direction, but will also request assistance with their own problems, which Smushi will gladly accept, being such a nice and friendly mushroom as he is.

The game will thus follow Smushi’s journey back home, in which he will traverse three different areas. The effortless platforming mechanic and the exploration blend resulting in very relaxed gameplay. The areas are small enough for you to see their limits from a higher point, but big enough to allow around two hours of exploration / side objective completion in each of them. A mix of easy minigames, various challenges, diving, as well as cave exploration will be some of the things you’ll get to experience in the game. Aside from jumping (which can be upgraded after meeting certain NPCs), Smushi also has a leaf that he uses as a glider for short distances. This will be used mostly to reach those platforms that are otherwise not accessible by jumping from below. There are also collectibles (crystals) that you can gather that will be used both for buying certain items needed for quests and also to craft cosmetics for Smushi’s hat.

While Smushi Come Home is very casual in most parts, there are a few side-missions that are either time-limited, or will require you to go through a lengthy course of obstacles. However, completing these is required only if you aim to obtain all the achievements. These took a bit of patience and retry on my part, but compared to your average difficulty platformer, the game was quite forgiving, allowing the player to re-spawn right before they failed, essentially having them replay just a few seconds instead of the whole mission.

Aside from the fact that the game is specifically built for easy platforming, I also loved the fact that after reaching the ending, you can revisit all the areas (you unlock a fast teleport option) to grab those missed collectibles / achievements. In that regard, there are no achievements missable, as long as you manage to beat all the challenges. One particular achievement requires a bit of grinding, namely the one for which you need to collect a certain amount of crystals. Likely depending on how thoroughly you explore the areas, you can obtain it naturally even before the game ends. As for me, I didn’t obtain it naturally, and finding those leftover crystal hubs after the game ended and after I collected everything I could see during my normal playthrough was a bit frustrating, but luckily I needed only a few of them.

Smushi Come Home was overall a delightful experience. It took me between five and six hours to complete. I loved its little story, funny dialogues and minimalistic hand-drawn graphics, but its real strength lies in the overly positive vibe that it infuses you with.

[steam type=”store” item=”1740300″