[Disclaimer: I received a review key for Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators. The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience. Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]
Systems: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: October 10, 2024
Publisher: Meringue Interactive
Time Spent: ~4 Hours
I have almost nothing negative to say about Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band, a strange hybrid of visual novel, puzzle-sorting, and fighting game. The format fits the Nintendo Switch wonderfully both with the controller and touch screen although when I first started I was saddened that there were no motion controls, but we'll get to why that would've been a bad decision a bit later. I'm also going to have a hard time writing something coherent about this game because just like Tux and Fanny, trying to accurately describe Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band is like trying to explain in writing why a joke is funny. You have to be there in the moment to hear the setup, see the visuals, and hear the punchline in the context of the visuals and what happened five screens prior just to catch the callback.
But let's give it a try anyway.
Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band is the name of a fictional children's variety show where the titular character of Miss Rosen, who herself is a "living" clockwork majorette figure visits various locations and talks with special guests. Each of the guests has a problem for Miss Rosen to solve which involves performing an items sorting puzzle where the player has to fit a certain number of objects within a given space within a certain amount of time. After several puzzles and dialogue to move the plot along, the setting changes and the process repeats which is the only negative thing I have to say. Each new chapter/episode begins with nearly the same dialogue from Miss Rosen, which works well if you're only playing one chapter/episode at a time, but if you're binging the game, then it could feel repetitive very quickly. I had to only play up to two chapters at a time and then come back the next day
The absurdist nature of the entire game makes all of this work. A lot of the character models look like something out of a kid's toy box, and even the explanations behind how the game operates inhabit a similar mindset. Dunno, for instance, is a small boy who only looks that way because he has a bandana covering his face, masking the fact that he's actually a full-sized Tyrannosaur. Or the fact that apart from the visual novel aspect of the game, the only other thing you do is put objects within the confines of a container. Some of the puzzles get pretty complicated later on in the game such as objects that move on their own, or objects that have to be facing a specific direction before they will be "accepted" as part of a completed puzzle. .png)
There were quite a few puzzles that took me multiple attempts to complete and the game does offer a pass if you're unable to complete a puzzle after three attempts. While I appreciated this offer to skip a puzzle, I managed to complete every one, although I used the touchscreen for finer accuracy for some. For me, the Switch controllers, or likely any controller, were too finicky and not precise enough to get, say, a dinosaur and three enemies in a single book. With the touchscreen, I found that I could move objects literally a pixel at a time which made solving puzzles in the late game a lot more manageable, even if they took multiple attempts. For the most part, the sorting puzzles were enjoyable and continued with the absurd nature of the game.
Without spoiling much, there were even mini-boss fights that incorporated the same sorting puzzles while still maintaining coherence with the rest of the game:
I had a blast playing Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band once I stepped back and stopped trying to play as much of the game in a single sitting as possible. When treated like a short TV show and only playing through one or two chapters/episodes at a time, preferably per day even, I found that I was able to enjoy the repetitiveness. The story too was engaging in a bizarre and silly manner, and I did enjoy the crossover with Meringue Interactive's previous game, About an Elf that looks to be in a similar vein to Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band that I will likely pick up at some point in the near future.
Long live the Meringuverse!
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
All the Good Times Baby
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