Game EXP: Mr. Goofer's Mini Game Arcade Party! Part 1 (PC/VSD)

 [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Mr. Goofer's Mini Game Arcade Party! 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.] 

Mr. Goofer's Mini Game Arcade Party!
Systems: Windows, Linux
Release Date: February 5, 2025
Publisher: Svinta
Developer: Svinta
Time Spent: 4.4 Hours*

Mr. Goofer's Mini Game Arcade Party! is at its base, a collection of 25 individual unconnected arcade games that you might find at a nickel-and-dime arcade with some modern adaptations.  You start out with access to only one game, and after completing a specific requirement, you unlock the ability to play the next game.  Of the 25 possible games, I was only able to play 17 as I ended up being soft-locked out of the 18th due to compatibility issues on the Steam Deck with the 18th game, which we'll get to on Friday.  Like any collection of 25 games in a single package, there are going to be some great games, some good games, and some bad games so we're going to break down each game and give our brief thoughts on each.  One of the connecting factors for a lot of the games is that they are unforgiving and require a lot of patience and fortitude to reach the required number of points to unlock the next stage.

We also have a playlist up on YouTube here which we'll be uploading videos to throughout the week.

Coin Catch

A pretty simple game where you have to catch the right things and avoid the wrong things.  Thankfully, you don't have to catch all the things, only just don't touch the bad things like bombs and dynamite.  But then there's me during my first playthrough where I mistook the grey circles for bombs or at least something bad because the gold coins, gold bells, and red fruit looked like the things you were supposed to catch.  I never did figure out about the fruit bonus, if you're supposed to only catch fruit, but I wasn't about to find out.

Jumper

This game went on waaaaaaay too long in every way shape, and form.  You can only jump one height, from what I could tell, until you get the propeller hat and that just gives you a higher jump and changes the rhythm that you established in the previous 79 jumps.  I also couldn't tell if the pace of the barrels changed at all throughout the game, but it feels like they stayed at the same rhythm and momentum the whole time.

Recker

The first of several multi-stage mini-games that actually do a pretty decent job of introducing mechanics that help in later stages.  How ladders will launch you into the air once you reach the top instead of a traditional climbing mechanic.  With each timed stage, if you don't wreck all the things and reach the end flag before the timer reaches zero, you have to start the whole sequence of games over from the beginning.  What kind of annoyed me a bit was that the second stage where you have to avoid the union workers and smash the glass they're carrying requires almost near-constant movement and down-to-the-wire precision, that even two missed jumps will eat up too much time and you won't be able to reach the flag before the timer reaches zero.  Frustrations aside, a pretty fun and satisfying mini-game.

Laser Launch

Like Recker before it, Laser Launch introduces the first of several games that offer two distinct mini-games, but this one changes the fundamentals of the second game.  In Recker, you're Recker breaking things with your mallet in each stage.  In Laser Launch, you're first playing a Space Invaders-like game except the aliens don't progress down the stage and there is no timer, only lives.  After defeating all of the enemies, you then play an Asteroids clone on a much smaller screen with a larger ship, but instead of having a set number of lives, this is more of a bonus stage to rack up as many points as possible within a two-minute time limit.  Neither Space Invaders or Asteroids are really my cup of tea so I didn't find this game overly interesting.

Icebreaker

Just like Laser Launch, Icebreaker is a two-part game, starting off with a Pong-like game where you have to survive an unbeatable snowman where the snowball that bounces back and forth slowly increases speed as the seconds count down.  Oddly enough, with 5 seconds remaining the timer starts broadcasting an audible "tick" sound each second which makes the game all the more nerve-wracking as you fear missing hitting the snowball back and having to start the game over from the beginning.  The second phase of this game is a Breakout-clone, but like the second half of Laser Launch, is purely optional in its completion if you just want to continue on to the next game.  I will say though that the ball physics in both games leave a lot to be desired and the direction that the paddles move when they hit the ball doesn't seem to have any effect on the trajectory or speed of the ball, which only made the Breakout-clone frustratingly difficult towards the end.

A Gridlock Maze

You know, this was kind of an interesting take on the Pac-Man genre, and unrelated, the first time in this collection that I ran into any kind of compatibility issue with the Steam Deck; which is also slightly my own fault.  In A Gridlock Maze, you control a chicken as they move through a maze filled with trucks that move vertically and horizontally and you have to collect every pellet on the screen to proceed to the next level.  The compatibility issue came up after collecting the larger pellets in the corners of the maze as the Enter key wasn't mapped to any of the buttons on the Steam Deck I tried the Right Trigger, R Shoulder Button, and all of the A/B/X/Y so I was never able to use the speed boost.  There is a second stage that is slightly more complicated in that it requires the player to keep the lines that the trucks move in their mind since the grid is more open with less obvious "lanes."

Goofball Pinball

I know of at least one person who would absolutely hate this game, but I won't name-drop her here.  Goofball Pinball was a strangely created pinball game on so many levels.  First, there's no door/stopper from having the ball re-enter the hammer chamber either after your initial hit to start the game, or at any other time the ball is in play.  It can just end up back in the alley where it started.  Second, the flippers are useable only with the directional pad, meaning you can't press both flippers at the same time; except this only applies to the Steam Deck since you're able to press two keys at the same time on the keyboard, which the game was initially designed for.  Thirdly, the ball has horrible unweighted physics.  I don't know how else to describe it than just that the ball physics is absolutely horrible.  Lastly, because there was no ball limit, this game just felt, like so many other games in this collection, like a test of endurance.  The second game, required to actually pass this stage, the Skeeball section, was a lot more difficult than it initially looked because you only have 12 balls and 10 targets to hit, which means you're only allowed two misses while you try and figure out the right angle to throw the balls.  And since trying to get the ball up the ramp on the left portion of the screen feels more like luck than any actual skill required, you really feel like messing up the Skeeball is tantamount to restarting from the beginning.  The good things I will say are that the sound effects for the bumpers and slingshots were very satisfying.   

Whack-A-Gopher

While as simplistic as both of the games in Whack-A-Gopher are and considering the difficulty with down-to-the-wire timers in previous games, I was surprised that there wasn't a timer of any kind here.  Even a "whack the mole, but don't whack the bunny" mechanic since the pinwheels at the top felt like stand-ins for lives.  Or even if you miss a gopher you lose a pinwheel since there never seemed to be more than one gopher pop up at any given time.  So this was just, whack until you get a score then play a simplistic match three and just really hope that the game is forgiving enough to give you at least one possible match.

Odd Hue Out

This was probably one of the stranger games in the collection.  The first of the two games is to simply fill in the playing space while the second game is to click on the one square on the grid whose color doesn't belong.  And then do that 100 times to move on to the next game.  This is another example of a game that just goes on way too long.  There's no bonus square to hit or any other way to boost your score.  It's all just a test of patience and endurance to make it to 100.  I guess nerves could be factored into the equations, which is what happened to me when I missed the second time.  The first miss was getting the yellow square that turned red and blended in with the other red squares around it.

So those were the first nine games in Mr. Goofer's Mini Game Arcade Party!  Like I said waaay up there, there are some fun games and some not much fun games and most require the player to maintain a level of patience and an exercise in monotony I feel is not often seen in arcade games.  We'll cover the other nine games on Friday, but if there's a future patch, we'll likely cover the rest of the games, which I will also get into more in Friday's article.

How's that for a cliffhanger?

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

*P.S.  I spent an additional 18 minutes earlier today, and that will make more sense on Friday.