Must Dash Amigos

Review

(Early Access Review. As an early access release, you may experience bugs, content, interface and optimization changes. If you are not excited to play the title in its current state and to help support the title to full release by reporting bugs and requesting additional content, you may want to wait for further development)

Introducing a remarkable family-friendly couch potato game that is jam-packed full of frantic single-player and multiplayer fun. What exactly is it you might ask? It is a combination of a time trial racer and brawler with a ton of spicy action! Take control of a character from one of the 4 available; if more than one person chooses the same character they will have a different color assigned, unless you or they have unlocked any more skins. No matter what game mode you play, you will need to grab pinatas spread around the tracks that contain buffs/debuffs (with random contents). They will either give you a weapon or a boost to use to gain an advantage.

In single-player mode, you will be racing to beat the clock in time trial racetracks. Your goal is to get that gold medal and the fastest time record. In challenge mode, you take on one of three challenges through every biome that is currently in-game. Each has unique mechanics that are exhilarating and get your heart racing as you master them. I hope for more variety in them as the game reaches full release.

In multi-player mode, you will need one or more friends to join you, with up to 4-player couch potato gameplay. This is where the game shines, as the competitive play is fun for the whole family, from us grandparents to our kids and grandchildren! Currently in-game there are three choices of play styles available: Race (single by the track head-to-head racing), Battle (arena-style brawler), and Tourney (multiple races where whoever wins the most races will be the champion). I also hope for a wider variety of these on full release. Battling with friends and family is a riot as you try to take the lead and either destroy your opponents or leave them in your dust, disqualifying them from the race.

Released & self-published on Jul 23, 2019, by the developer miniBeast Game Studios. As their first release on Steam, I am very impressed with the game even in its early access point of development. I have tagged it Indie, Family Friendly, Action, Racing, Local Coop, Casual. It is a casual title with a slight learning curve that will not take long to master; it is a little challenging to get gold stars on all levels (practice makes perfect). It has a lot of features in place, with single-player and local coop couch potato gameplay, a colorful simplistic low poly world design from a birds-eye perspective, striking soundtrack and sound effects, and a myriad of items to pick up as you progress through each level. There are currently 16 Unlockable player’s outfits you can purchase (with mustaches earned as you play), 12 exhilarating racetracks through 4 different regions, and 8 battle arenas, 12 challenges, and 18 tournaments give the title a tremendous amount of replayability in its current state, with full controller support!

I did have an issue with crashing when tasking out of the title, but this happened a lot less frequently when I enabled the run in background feature in the graphics options and tasked out after using the Steam overlay. When I do not use the overlay it still crashes.

I also had an issue on first launch with my duel monitor system. The game loads to a very large resolution in windowed mode that spread across both my screens. The in-game fit to window would not work to get it to fit to one screen. I used my Borderless Gaming application to force it to fullscreen, set it to fit screen and had no issues loading after. I do not imagine this will be an issue with single screen users (I did not test this). These have been reported in the discussions.

A very captivating title for early access, we look forward to seeing where its progression leads at full release. Most of the family have been playing this one with me; we still have a couple of family members who have to get in some game time with us (we are a large gaming family). It is certain to become a regular in our couch potato events at home (unanimous vote by everyone who has played). It's amusing humor, simple colorful graphic style, and insane power-ups are sure to give countless hours of momentous gameplay, both alone & with friends.  I have enjoyed it immensely (we all have, even though my kids and grandson make me play my butt off to be able to win about only 1/3 of our competitions). For an aging gamer like myself, I say good show old man (my family can be ruthless in competitive gaming)! For all the local coop lovers out there, this is going to be a must-play.

For settings the standard requirements are met.

Review written by DamageInc.for Zeepond.com!