We've mentioned before about the surprising resurgence of the 2D platformer on the ios, er... platform. Often these games will use an art style reminiscent of this genre's heyday, and Mutant Mudds certainly does its best to visually place itself alongside the early 90s PC shareware classics like Secret Agent, and Duke Nukem. You play as Max, who travels along stages shooting enemies with a water cannon, and collecting plenty of thingamabobs (every platformer has to have thingamabobs). What makes Mutant Mudds stand out from its peers is its special gameplay mechanic, and that is the ability to travel not only into the background of a stage, but the foreground as well.

Yup, at certain points in each level, you will come across a launch pad with an arrow on it. Pressing either down or up on the d-pad will catapult Max to another plane of existence - graphical plane that is. The game initially sets this up well. In the first level, you may notice that there are enemies and gems to collect in the background of the level, and you think to yourself that this was added to give some more character to the stage (perhaps thinking that a future level is being represented in the distance). Then you reach your first launch pad, you get flung into what you were looking at before, and a smile emerges on your face. Then you notice giant gems in the foreground and it all clicks into place. The controls do their best given that they're on screen buttons, and the challenges those bring, but all in all they do their job adequately.

The pixel art does its job with plenty of distinct worlds and creatures to deal with, and Max himself certainly is an unlikely, yet endearing looking hero. The music lays down some head nodding catchy tunes as you jump and shoot your way through the stages. If only the stages themselves were a little more inspired.

Without any form of compelling level design you spend the game going through the motions of jumping and shooting. I mean yes, the plane switching mechanic is great at first, but then they really don't do too much with it aside from it being a further or closer perspective to jump and shoot like you've been doing the entire game. Fans of the 2D platformer will most likely enjoy themselves for a while. The presentation is solid and the world is enjoyable to jump around and plane-hop in... just probably not for very long.