Game EXP: Mr. Goofer's Mini Game Arcade Party! Part 2 (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*

Today we'll look at the eight remaining games I was able to play in Mr. Goofer's Mini Game Arcade Party! on the Steam Deck and my explanation for why I was unable to continue with game number 18.  Part 1 of our series published on Monday looks at the first nine games and the general approach to the game, so go back and read that if you haven't already because we're going to jump right into game number nine.

And our playlist up on YouTube is located here.

Smartly Sort

The basics behind this game are pretty simple. Pick up and place the running blobs in the box based solely on their color. Each color is associated with a different shape, too, but they're hard enough to see with the filter on, and it's really just easier to focus on their color instead. What's hard about this game is using the touchpad on the Steam Deck quickly and efficiently.  You also cannot let any of the running blobs make it across the screen as that counts against you the same way that sorting the runners incorrectly does.  What I found worked best for me was to use the Steam Deck's touchscreen functionality as I found it worked better and allowed me to sort at a faster rate.  But not fast enough to catch the orange runner or to figure out where you're supposed to put this one.

Face Fixing Frenzy

Hoo boy.  I thought for a while that this game was going to be the end of the road for me.  In the first section, you're expected to button-mash the keyboard to wake up Sally, and for the first half, I was only using the L/R trigger buttons, but then once I figured out that I could also use the directional pad and buttons along with the triggers, you'll notice this section passing a lot faster; except that times that it wasn't because this was apparently pretty loud and was waking Conklederp up.  The second section of this game caused me some serious grief.  I just couldn't get the mouse to move as quickly and as accurately as I needed it to pop every pimple (which I also found to be a pretty disgusting portion of this mini-game).  Then the apparent accuracy needed to click and drag specific objects to their corresponding other half before applying them to Sally's face was equally frustrating.  Like Smartly Sort, I ended up reverting to using my finger to play this mini-game, but even then, it was only after coming back to the game and turning off the filter (believing that part of my issue might have been the warping of the image from the filter, or just me being a shitty player) and I was finally able to make it through.

Crazy Clown Cafe

The concept of this game was rather simple: play a modified Shell Game but with cakes, then deliver individual cakes to a customer, but avoid the banana peel on the ground.  What made this game maddening were the controls which only used the mouse.  Getting the clown to move requires you to slide the mouse, or in the Steam Deck's case, your thumb across the trackpad, then click the R trigger to jump, but you have to maintain the movement of the mouse/thumb through the jump as the Clown does not maintain forward momentum.  Now, I don't know how the real estate of the trackpad on the Steam Deck relates to an actual standard size mouse pad, but it genuinely didn't feel like there was enough room.  On top of that, the Clown starts moving the split second you're on that screen.  The first half-dozen times I started, I thought that the Clown was falling over as part of a "this is what happens," but no, it was because the "start" button is on the right side of the screen, so when you click the button the start the game if the cursor (which sadly is not visible in the video) is still hovering over the start button, then the Clown will start running right into the banana.  This also made selecting the cake when it landed on the far side of the table in the Shell Game portion, all the more anxiety-driven because you almost had to select the cake while you're moving the cursor back over to the left side of the screen.  And even after feeling like I had a good grasp on the controls, moving always put me on edge.

Pill Puzzle

I don't want to say that I was made for this mini-game, but I know that for at least the time I was ranked #1 (I'll need to jump back in and double-check), I can say that my Mom could be proud of me; The Kid would probably comment that I should've gotten to at least 300.  So Pill Puzzle is essentially a mix of Dr. Mario, Tetris, and any generic match-three game on the market.  The game wasn't difficult perse, but you could only rotate the blocks in one direction since you could only use one button, then once the blocks started speeding up, that's when it became difficult to get them where I wanted them to be.  Obviously or I would've gotten 300+ points.

Downer Diver

After the fun and relative easiness of Pill Puzzle, I was worried about an underwater stage, but Downer Diver was a lot more relaxing than I had feared.  While the game did start you out with 5 HP, I was afraid that you would have to do the run flawlessly without getting hit, which would send you back up to the surface to attempt your descent all over again.  I also feared that upon reaching the treasure chest at the bottom, you would then have to go back through the stage all the way to the top.  But no.  Instead Downer Diver is a more-or-less semi-relaxing descent into the water while avoiding often slow-moving sea creatures and once you get the chest, that's it.  You're done.

When Pigs Can Fly

This mini-game is essentially just Downer Diver but in reverse.  Instead of a diving duck, you're a flying pig.  The basics are pretty much the same although there are some tweaks to the mechanics.  Instead of pressing down, you press the A button to flutter your wings and can release A to slowly drop down to avoid mid-air obstacles.  The one thing that threw me in this game was how to effectively avoid the wind and not get pushed into the clouds.  I obviously was able to make it through the windy section, but I feel like you should be able to beat this without taking a hit, but I don't know how to maneuver around the wind gusts without just trying to occasionally dodge while powering my way through.  And honestly, that end of the level. . . just a little sad.

Trivial Timed Tasks

What is it with the collection of games and accuracy?  Trivial Timed Tasks is made up of four separate games, all with a 30-second time limit, and failing to complete the task in the time allowed kicks you back to the game select screen.  So this one is pretty brutal as evidenced by the fact that it took me 22 minutes to figure out all of the sections.  Getting through the cheese section unscathed took an embarrassing amount of attempts.  Even the fact that one-hit-kills here, which makes sense because they're mouse traps and you're a mouse, makes this one of the many unforgiving mini-games not just in this collection of tasks, but out of all of the mini-games in this entire game.  In the second game, the claw game, once I figured out that you should grab the clock, it became a lot easier to get through; and thankfully the hit box for each item was very forgiving.  The fly-swatting game felt more hectic although once you realize the trick to this one* it becomes a little easier.  The final game, the ship battle against the pirate, is the definition of simplicity.  Unless you're me and you don't realize you're supposed to sail off-screen at the end to actually beat the stage.

The Painful Platformer

You know, despite this one also taking nearly 20 minutes to complete, it wasn't nearly as difficult as I feared, it just takes a long time to get through.  If there had been a countdown timer for different sections, this would've been significantly more difficult.  I also like the inclusion of two other characters to play as, both with different jumping heights.  Sunny Shyon has a shorter jump which requires them to take longer, often having to double back after obtaining the hard-to-reach key to progress through the stage.  Hopper has a higher jump which means you can skip having to redo sections and just, jump up and grab a key.  The problem with Hopper is when the stages get more compact which even with Sunny, often requires you to jump and then move laterally to not hit the ceiling spikes.  So not overly difficult, just a long stage that gets more stressful as you near the end.

Disco at Dusk

This is where my Mr. Goofer adventure sadly came to an end due to some kind of incompatibility with the Steam Deck.  Before you play the game, you have to select the song that you want to play, but you're also able to load and play your own custom songs, as long as they're in an OGG format.  Now, for whatever reason, the Steam Deck didn't like how the game brought up a separate window for song selection, and while I was able to move the mouse cursor around on the screen, I wasn't able to click on anything (as in my clicks weren't registering).  I tried multiple times but to no avail.  Unfortunately, you have to go through this process since if you select the option to play the mini-game, the game tells you that a song needs to be selected first before you can play.  

Yeah, I was pretty sad that this was how the game ended for me.  I did boot it up on my laptop to see if I could just play this level and then go back to the Steam Deck for the rest of the game.  I did try to locate where the game saves its save files to then transfer that single file to my laptop, but since that's apparently not a uniform location, I wasn't able to find it either.  My last option was to replay each of the mini-games to continue and finish the game on my laptop, but as I started playing through the first six games again, I began to feel that that wasn't something that I wanted to do all over again.  That being said, this was a decent collection of games that you're not likely to find outside of an Atari 2600/Intellivision or your local Wunderland/Quarterworld arcade.  There's charm here, but some of that charm is hiding a nasty-looking and unforgiving mouse trap.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I Let Him Croon and He Lets Me Steer

P.S. I promise that if I figure out where the save files are located or if I make it to Disco at Dusk on my laptop, I'll continue and hopefully finish this fun/frustrating/endurance-driven collection of games and upload the videos to our existing playlist.