Review | Super Waifu Ball - The Wrong Sort Of Monkey Business
I feel like in order to be able to comment on what went wrong with Super Waifu Ball, I at least need to have the balls (as in the ones the titular Waifu characters roll around in) to cut the developers at Mitsuki Game Studio some slack.
Don’t let the title fool you—I actually will be grilling this game quite a bit—but I have to admit that I fell in love with this Spanish developer’s main claim to fame, Waifu Impact, for having the proper fever-dreamish elements needed to make it a laughably enjoyable kusoge experience. It also does somewhat help Mitsuki Game Studio that the bar has been set even lower in places like the Nintendo eShop thanks to all those generative AI games with “Hentai” blatantly in the name. I would add the caveat I am against the practice of calling adult or sexualised games “slop” just on principle (I personally am highly in favour of an adult games industry being properly fostered with stuff that isn’t scammy or devoid of any artistic merit and also for adult themes in games from all regions being normalised). In a sea of AI-generated mush that can only be described as slop being pushed out by a weird hodgepodge of shovelware developers, asset flippers, and sad bigoted men in their 50s for some reason, I think it is worth noting that the very rudimentary and clunky to play games Mitsuki Game Studio puts out miraculously still stand high above that admittedly extremely low bar. However, I am conflicted how much I would ascribe that praise to the developer’s most recent outing, Super Waifu Ball.
—
Knowing this is published and ported to consoles (PS4 and PS5 as of now) by Barcelona-based JanduSoft based on Mitsuki Game Studio’s original PC version should set your expectations for something of a derivative experience on some level. Waifu Impact’s namesake and logo design is clearly trying to make you laugh your Koikatsu Party-model-looking buttocks off at its ability to look like HoYoVerse’s premiere global gacha game phenomenon, Genshin Impact, if you squint enough.
In the case of Super Waifu Ball, Mitsuki just took the monkeys out of Super Monkey Ball and expected those Koikatsu Party-model-looking buttocks-es and mammaries to fill in the rest. It would seem that would be a perfect recipe for me, as I was very happy with Sega and RGG Studio’s Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble last year—and I am the resident Waifu Impact fan of startmenu dot co dot uk. So I should be the most qualified to kick this game’s levels in its (proverbial this time if you would believe it) Koikatsu Party-model-looking buttocks and sing its praises, right?
Well, sadly that isn’t the case. The biggest problem is that the team got the physics so wrong that I’m not sure I could finish this game if I wanted to… Mitsuki Game Studio was biting off more than they could chew, and almost came together in the end, but the game ultimately felt like an annoying lump in the throat.
I’ll give the positive spiel really quick first: I am unsure how many of the assets in this game were or even if the music was already pre-made, but there are actually a lot of aesthetic strengths this game has… for what it is. The skyboxes actually look pretty decent for a budget Super Monkey Ball clone, and I have to say this capsule machine is probably the prettiest installation inside a Mitsuki Game Studio masterpiece. The level structure of gaining one of three “Stars” (currency for characters and the capsule machine) for beating a stage, collecting all the in-stage “Stars”, and finishing the stage under a certain time is the level completion structure taken straight from Banana Rumble, so I feel like there would be a non-zero amount of kudos to give if Super Waifu Ball managed to be completed in the time between Banana Rumble’s launch and its release. I would say everything could have come together if it weren’t for the aforementioned physics engine issues this game seems to be tumbling into at every corner.
Before studying closely how my controls would affect my rolling waifu, I first…realised I needed to run the game with the Steam Deck’s Proton Experimental instead of the default Proton layer just so I could get a more stable performance on my end—where it now does run fine albeit a little hiccupy. After this, however, I quickly noticed the ball tends to constantly get stuck on the stage’s own geometry. It honestly summarises the core issue with trying to make the game a no-frills Monkey Ball clone right there: If the physics engine has a major flaw that makes moving around feel bad, give up! When the ball would bounce on a minuscule mesh edge, or a series of them on a curve of a ramp, it would really mess up the momentum. I was partially convinced there was basically no momentum at all (and hardly any bounce, too). One stage that was all half pipes felt impossible to get the necessary air time to collect the stars with or consistently get a fast enough clear time in because the ball would always crash on one of the creases on what should be a CURVY half pipe. The camera also didn’t work as well to follow the player well at all like even the original GameCube Monkey Ball games were able to do.
Speaking of CURVY, the “fanservice” aspect of this game, which I wouldn’t inherently knock you for wanting, is mostly nonexistent. Mitsuki Game Studio has released nudity patches for other games in its back catalogue if you are into that sort of thing, and good for you if you want that, but I would also say there really wouldn’t be much here in that department even when this game gets that. The story is vaguely Mario Party-esque in that there is a single opening cutscene just about a star festival happening and the whole gang is ready to collect some stars, and I’m guessing any exciting foreplay from that scenario is probably happening off-screen.
Additionally, all the characters use the same voice lines (the only Japanese language option featured in this game is through the audio, which is also the only voice option), the animation is just a canned basic run with boob jiggle physics (I called the buttocks proverbial earlier because they clearly prefer the chest over the tushy for fanservice). Spending stars to unlock characters that have the same animations, body shape, and voice lines just doesn’t feel interesting, and while I do think conversely the models you can earn from the capsule machine are kinda interesting, the game is overall unimpressive from a collectables standpoint. Overall, the game feels like it has the minimum legal limit of “Waifu” for a game called Super Waifu Ball.
That really isn’t a problem for me at the end of the day because I have faith in this studio, albeit, for a bit of mixed-good-faith-bad-faith reasons.
On one hand, I actually could see Mitsuki Game Studio’s output being the work of some developers in Spain who just wanna practice the basics of game development and just happen to, honestly smartly, cash in on their rudimentary learning by making an outrage-inducing product you buy on sale on the eShop or gift your friend on Steam as a joke, and I do hope these games are providing that learning experience the developers sought out.
On the other hand, I am mostly into these games because of their fever-dream kusoge factor. Nothing cracked me up more than going on a water gun rampage the first time playing Waifu Impact and seeing that big boss oversized anime girl appear after you get up to a spree of 25 kills with each of them making the exact same sound effects and voice lines — even the bad stuff like the clickbait-esque logo card on the eShop, the wretched performance on the Switch, and shoddy platforming didn’t really reduce my chuckling smirk at all.
However, with such a blatant and almost carbon copy of Super Monkey Ball’s gameplay for the studio’s new outing, that aforementioned fever-dream magic has been lost in a lot of ways, and now I just am frustrated at playing a game that just doesn’t feel quite right to control. I was somewhat hoping for the physics engine to be worse. Maybe that would make it feel like its own thing and that I’m navigating a game that plays by its own rules, but instead, I just feel like I’m playing copied homework from a student that I feel can make more entertaining D+ papers. I do think imitation is still a decent way to learn some aspects of development like how to use and optimise a game engine, so I do not want to discourage Mitsuki Game Studio from practicing development that way, but even on a simple level, Super Waifu Ball is too derivative only sucking the soul out of what makes Mitsuki's output special, and even if that output has been a little stinky, I would argue it is okay to embrace it in this case.
Keep at it folks. Also aim for a physical version of Waifu Impact!
Pros:
Inoffensive Super Monkey Ball Clone
Decent aesthetic despite simplicity and probably some of this studio’s best graphical and performance work
Cons:
Inoffensive Super Monkey Ball Clone that misses the mark where it counts
Physics are just very uncooperative in small ways
There are funnier budget games to be playing by this same studio no less
