Scarlet Pirate’s Impressions: Crafting Mama
First off, no discussion about Crafting Mama can properly begin without first posting the VG Cat’s Classic strip. I love it. Granted, there’s the small problem of poor Mama can only do “feminine” things. I know. But if you can manage to can the cognitive dissonance for awhile, they’re so fun to play.I’ve played most of the Mama games. At least tried. Original Cooking Mama was freakin’ hard, and I think being American caused a lot of confusion on my end. How the FUCK do I cook with chopsticks! You make yams by burning leaves on top of them?! Oh wait, that was Muramasa.
Gardening Mama was a lot of fun though. I played the shit outta that game. The controls were wonky at times, but it’s one of the few that uses the touch screen—even if it’s just a bunch of mini games.
Which brings us to Crafting Mama. In this iteration, they are much, MUCH more forgiving in the pass/fail tasks. In previous versions, if you so much as missed one tiny stroke, or rotation, you would automatically get deducted points. In Crafting Mama, you only need to pass each stage within the time limit to earn full points of that round.
The needle-felting craft is a good example: in the first round, you pull apart felt from a ball. If you tug too hard, the ball of felt get misshapen, but you don’t lose points. You lose time rolling the ball, but as long as you finish the set amount of -whatevers- within the time frame, you pass the level.
There’s a lot of different crafts to do—I’ve built a wind chime, paper sumo wrestler, earrings, hairband, and more—but there’s only so much I can take in one sitting. I also have this overwhelming guilt for playing a game about making things, instead of doing my own projects.
In short, it’s a fun game to waste time with, but it’s not a long, sit down game. I got my copy through Gamefly; and I’m glad I didn’t buy it.
