First and foremost: regardless of how much I might sympathise with the developers’ political leanings, I’m not going to pretend this game is good by any metric.
You notice right off the bat, SBW is fairly clearly ‘inspired’ by Nintendo’s critically-acclaimed 1991 Super Mario Bros 3, right down to the level design, movement mechanics, and choice of title screen font.
At least it’s free. (which starting to make me think this game might have some sort of socialist subtext.)
For all this aping of a bonafide classic’s style, don’t expect anything remotely good or fun to come out of playing this game. There are superficial reproductions of many Mario franchise stage hazards - bottomless pits, Maga Hat-Goombas, Mitch McConnell koopas, etc - across twelve levels. There’s no difficulty curve, or lives system, or overworld map, or more than three seconds of looping music.
Let’s not pretend these sorts of political satire puff piece games are ever good, regardless of the politics involved. The game’s defenders might say that it’s not that deep because it was only made on a zero-dollar budget in their lunchbreak or whatever, but I’d rather we actually get some actual good social satire one day instead of just excuses as to why it’s bad.
If you really want to play it, just make sure you get to before Nintendo’s famously litigious lawyers manage to inevitably take it down.
PS: I bet if Bob ‘MovieBob’ Chipman finds out about this game, he’ll tweet something dumb in defence of it. That just seems like something he’d do.
