Mad Mojo sets itself up to be a monster-catching deckbuilder that’s inspired by Poker, but there is something else there, hidden in the game, something which breaks the world around it. With the slightly off graphics, giant save icon character, and way that you can delete aspects of the game before launching it, if you dare.
Mad Mojo starts before the monster capturing, deckbuilder aspect, as you can read your own email and understand that you have been sent this game to playtest it for your friend. You can dive into the art folder so that you can see the various characters or check out the individual files that are inside the game as well. The little helper on your screen might even encourage you to delete the some of the items within the game, if you dare.
Once you get into the meat of the game, you will be taking on monsters through Poker-inspired battles, where you must select cards and use them to fight off a monster that you are against. This will cost you some of your mana, which you can only get back by deflecting the various attacks that come back at you. If you fail to deflect, you not only lose life but also the ability to play more cards in the next round.
I do not know a ton about Poker, but it’s easy to see pairs and monsters with the same backgrounds as each other, so it becomes a pretty easy game to actually play. If a monster is defeated in Mad Mojo, you then go onto the next level, which might have an even more powerful creature that you need to destroy. There are over 100 different cards and 50 different artefacts, which can be used to supercharge your cards and your combinations, leading to a large deck that can be managed!
There is also something hidden within the game, about this world and about your friend that you are playtesting for, but in my limited time with the demo at MCM Comic Con, I didn’t quite crack the code.
You can wishlist Mad Mojo on Steam, ahead of its release later this year.