Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic! Marching Band Review (Switch)

How much fun? This much fun!

You have no idea how excited I was when I saw this game and found out who was making it. The second the trailer started I though “Hmm, this seems familiar…like that weird elf game I played years ago” and, when I looked it up, it was the same developer for About An Elf! I remember really liking About An Elf and how funny, weird, and charming the game was and, after watching the trailer and getting the same vibes, I knew I had to play their new game.

Here is Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic Marching Band we follow a clockwork majorette who has escaped her music box and has since started her own tv show. As you’d probably guess, her name is Miss Rosen and during her tv show, which is the same name as the game’s title, she visits many places to have some fun and help those there. We come in right at the beginning of one of her episodes as we get to hear her trademark catchphrase for the first time as she arrives at what she suspects is the middle of nowhere. As she worries about there being no fun in the middle of nowehere, a surprise guest comes to greet Miss Rosen. A little boy with a bandana over his lower face approaches, but isn’t very talkative. Even when Miss Rosen is trying to be friendly and strike up a conversation. It isn’t until she asks where his parents are when he finally talks and reveals he’s a dinosaur (a T-Rex to be exact). He may not look like one, but oh boy does that bandana work wonders as a disguise. This doesn’t distract Miss Rosen like the little boy probably wanted as she keeps pushing for him to tell her where his parents are or where he lives. Since he won’t tell her, and she doesn’t just want to leave a little boy (or…not so little dinosaur boy) by himself in the middle of nowhere, she decides to take him with her to be on her tv show as a co-host. The little boy, who Miss Rosen names Dunno due to him saying “I dunno” during her questioning, is ecstatic.

So thus begins the season long story arc where Miss Rosen travels with Dunno. At first, Dunno was only supposed to be on for an episode as a co-host, but he manages to convince her she actually said one season. Sneaky little dinosaur not wanting to go back home, but Miss Rosen does allow it as long as Dunno keeps his promise about going back home after the season ends. Anyway, Miss Rosen’s show is all about visiting fabulous lands to make new friends and help those in trouble. Every episode of her show features them visiting a new location, which doesn’t look quite right but whatever, getting guests to do a short visit, and helping the guests that are in need of Miss Rosen’s organizational skills. However, there seems to be something evil going on as villains start to pop up every so often and items and people seem to be disappearing. Disappearing so completely it’s like they never existed. Who’s the big bad causing all this disappearing troubles? Will Dunno return home after the season ends? Where will Miss Rosen visit next? Stay tuned for the special binge event for Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic Marching Band!

I enjoyed the story here. While I did feel the game was trying a bit too hard at times, I did like how this continued the weird and absurd vibe that their previous game had. In fact, that’s mainly the reason why I wanted to play this game. Anyway, I did like how this game was framed like you were actually watching Miss Rosen’s tv show. Every chapter is an episode of her show where you see her show’s opening, there’s a stock “Yay!”, and it does have a formula that it usually follows. I may have even followed her intro catchphrase and said “This much fun!” every time it popped up. I even did enjoy the absurd locations, which is a mix of being based on real places, but off by some degree, and fantastical places that had mice as background actors. And oh boy, the characters. The weird characters that pop up. Everyone was certainly a delight to read, especially Miss Rosen and Dunno.

This game is also more streamlined, in a sense that there aren’t any choices here, but we surprisingly did get some topical topics quickly being touched on here. Like shows being completely taken off of streaming and games transitioning to grindy live service games. It does stick out a bit, but it helps that the writing style doesn’t change and does make an effort to having it fit the world.

Gameplay here is pretty simple. Miss Rosen has exceptional organization skills and she uses them to help people. No matter if its packing your luggage or organizing your desk, she has you covered. She even teaches Dunno her ways. Don’t worry, it’s nothing too complicated. Each puzzle will have a designated area and a couple items. These items are just colorful silhouettes when they’re outside of the area and the item is revealed once it is. This is used to determine whether an object is in a valid spot as you do only have a small space to pack all the objects in, the designated area can be bigger than you’d expect, and none of the objects can overlap. Of course, you can rotate items to help them fit in the space and around the other items. You can either use a controller or touch screen controls. Personally, I used the touch screen as I’m not someone that big on controlling a cursor with the thumb stick. Oh, and did I mention you have to do all this while time ticks down?

This may seem like it gets old quick, but the game does change it up or give you some surprises. Like there are some puzzles where the objects can’t stay still or some where objects appear one by one as time passes (don’t worry, they all appear quickly enough to where you have enough time to pack them all in). There are even some surprises when you rotate objects as they can be big, but become small enough to fit. Not to mention the easy puzzles that play on the rotations or fitting objects in an area to make an unique encounter. One of these includes the boss fights, which has you rotate both your fighter and the villain posing so the scene makes it look you were victorious.

If you fail a puzzle too many times (which I believe is either three or four failures) you do get the option to skip it. However, I don’t recommend using this unless you absolutely can’t figure it out and you feel like you tried every combination of item rotations and positioning.

The puzzles here are alright. They get the puzzle job done and they’re easy to get the hang of. The difficulty comes with finding a way to fit all of them through rotating and using the space to the fullest, but a lot of them are pretty easy. Even with the timer or the different conditions the objects can have. There were a few puzzles were challenging, and I actually had to use the skip puzzle option once as I couldn’t figure out how to fit three large and two small objects together and every time I thought I had it, I actually didn’t. You’d also think this would be a pixel perfect kinda thing, but it’s not really apart from a few puzzles. That said, I did like the puzzles. I didn’t mind they were mostly easy, I liked the twists that were put in so they didn’t get old (even though the objects constantly moving one is a bit annoying), and I did like how the difficulty came from figuring out how the objects needed to be rotated and placed. Seeing all the objects you’ll be handling was also a bit funny as you’re deep into the weird world of Miss Rosen.

There’s not really that many negatives towards Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic Marching Band, but they can be deal breakers. Like I mentioned before, it sometimes did feel like the game was trying too hard to achieve the same absurdity that About An Elf did effortlessly. It can also feel like you’re not really moving forward in the story, even though you technically are, since it doesn’t put much focus on it. Some may also not like the writing style or presentation. Personally, I didn’t mind as I was already going in expecting a silly, weird game and already knew how the developers wrote through their previous game. It’s not a game that you take seriously and just go with the flow, which is great if you’re in that mindset going in but not so much if you’re expecting something more serious.

I did also feel the game could have been an episode or two longer. Puzzle-wise, those looking for hard puzzles will be disappointed here as most of them are pretty easy even with the timer. This game is also short.

Lastly, the music and visuals here are great. The music definitely hits that marching band theme while being able to give the various locations, puzzle sequences, and even specific characters their own song. I did also like the sound effects for when the characters are talking and even the sound for when Miss Rosen is yelling in her microphone. I also loved the visuals here. It says a lot that I was able to immediately notice this was from Meringue Interactive just by the screenshots. I love the character models, how they’re animated (Dunno’s little dance is so adorable), and I love how the backgrounds look so weird and colorful. It was pretty funny when Miss Rosen would get most of a real city right, but get one thing wrong that ends up changing it drastically. I did also like the mice background actors and how you’ll notice them moving around and mostly syncing up to the background music.

Verdict

I enjoyed Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic Marching Band. I was not expecting another game from the developers of About An Elf and I’m glad I was able to find out and play it. It’s shorter, puts more focus on quick interactions than feeling like you’re progressing through the story, and it feels like it’s trying to hard to be as weird as the previous game; but it still does hit that weird and silly vibe, the characters were all a delight to talk to, the puzzles were nice, I liked the framing of this being a tv show that you’re watching, and the visuals were as charming as ever. The characters now being animated and moving around even adds to the charm rather than it being distracting like you’d think. Overall, I would recommend Miss Rosen’s Wowtastic Marching Band, but on the condition that you’re going in for a silly and weird game. Don’t set you expectations too high and this game can be a fun time to pass a couple hours.