Stranger Things : Netherly Monsters in the Pixelated 80's (And Waffles!)

( Happy New Year! )

It's been a while since I have updated the blog, but I've been addicted to a particular Netflix franchise. And lo and behold, I wound up playing their fantastic mobile game.

There are many things to account for this wonderful little RPG game we got here. Given the premise of this tap-and-point game, you play as Hopper who explores around the town in the setting of preparing for Halloween and post-season one. You get to meet more characters from the show as well as more places such as the laboratory, the library, the convenience store, and even the sewers. Getting to interact with the people in the town will allow you to take part of side quests as well as finding the rest of the locked characters to join your party, especially when it comes to fighting against the bad guys in white coats in the labs. Other times, you can attack objects in the game like mailboxes, bushes, and trashcans to get items such as rocks, money, or even hearts to increase your life force. Stumbling across enemies in the game is quite common if you come to certain areas relating to checkpoints in your main quest. these enemies include handymen with flying wrenches, dudes in trenchcoats who shoot laser guns and even swooping owls.

At some point, when you play as Hopper and because he is the only one who can do this, you get to even explore the Upside Down as well. Wearing the yellow hazmat suit, you get to venture into the crawling, infected shadow realms to fight against the Demogorgon infant slugs, sick veined eggs that they hatched out of (and can explode), and pass through this dimension through the hollow fleshy gaps existing in dead trees or even walls hidden around the town. Because this is the Upside Down, that means that it reveals an alternate environment to some of the levels you explore in the course of the game. For example, you may be roaming around a wonderful library. But in the Upside Down, the layout of the library is the same except it's covered in the masses of these horrific elements augmented on to it like parasites.

On a less horrifying note, you get to play a wide range of characters! There's Hopper, Lucas, Dustin, Mikey, Will, and Nancy! Playing as Hopper means you get to use the all-famous ultra-powerful punch, and if you select certain If you get to play as Lucas, you get yourself a cute little slingshot that could have done some number to a Demogorgon with rocks to hit switches at a distance and even knocking enemies quickly. If you get Nancy, you get yourself a baseball bat(probably not a gun like in the show since kids are also playing the mobile game) in which you can knock down unstable walls, logs, and beat down your enemies quite powerfully. Later on, if you find Mikey, you get to travel around town swiftly on his rad red bike and his trusty flashlight to stun enemies. And then if you find our adorable wearable genius Dustin, he throws cans of chocolate pudding to attract enemies to be momentarily by the chocolatey goodness. (And bonus secret: if you find all the waffles in the game, you get to unlock El and her psychic powers as well!)

With a lot of enemies to go against with, there are also the underground puzzles such as arranging lasers to pass through corridors, sewage control flow, rolling carts to unlock doors, and of course searching throughout the entire game layout to find keycards to gain access to locked doors(or buy them if you have enough money after busting up owls). At the end of these dungeons to patrol through, you'll come across a boss battle that requires your best players, thinking, and pudding. Sometimes you get to battle with evil scientists with electrifying force fields or even the demon amalgamations of the Upside Down. And when you defeated all the boss battles, you'll eventually even unlock Max as a character after you completed her side quest in the game.

With so much to offer in the Stranger Things: The Game, I really hope they build on exciting pieces of the upcoming season three this July 2019. Not to mention all the hidden bonuses in the game such as finding all the video cassette tapes to unlock a secret clip for Stranger Things in the movie theater as well. If they ever do update the game on the app store, I'm going to be addicted as ever to exploring this vast retro pixel landscape.

#strangerthings #demogorgens #eleven #waffles