Review: Mushroom Musume Is a Quick Princess Maker-Like Game

It’s the year of the Princess Maker game, baby! We’ve got Umamusume: Pretty Derby tearing up the Steam, Google Play, and App Store charts and consuming people’s free time. A new actual entry called Princess Maker: Children of Revelation entered early access. One game like Princess Maker that might have slipped under your radar is Mortally Moonstruck Games’ Mushroom Musume, a simulation about raising a daughter who is also a fungi. You shouldn’t let that happen though, as it’s also a pleasant, quick roleplaying experience.

Now, while stats do matter in Mushroom Musume, this does have more of a choose your own adventure like vibe mixed in with Princess Maker game concepts. Each run begins with players being a recluse who lives in alone in a forest. A witch comes along and offers a chance at a family by giving you a daughter. After fulfilling her tasks, which determine the starting situation, you start living with your “child” and making decisions. Once some time passes, you then step into the shoes of the daughter and go through some of her life experiences.

In practice, Mushroom Musume feels like a visual novel with some RPG elements. Decisions will come up, which will involve selecting a card or “rolling a die” to determine the direction or success of certain actions. From my experience, the parental choices at the outset tend to influence starting stats, with choices made by the child doing more for the Shroomy Qualities and results at the end. 

There’s also a roguelike element to things. Your first Mushroom Musume playthrough will always be the most stark. Your actions and results earns Spores to get upgrades that can influence additional routes. This, in turn, can make it possible to raise new types of daughters, see new events, or find success when pursuing different branches. All of this is also collected in a Mushroom Almanac, which allows you to keep track of what you have seen. 

This does mean there’s less control in Mushroom Musume than in a typical Princess Maker game, even though I’d lump both into the same stat-raising, character-management genre. In a game like Umamusume and Princess Maker, you can have a general idea of what will happen, what sorts of events will pop up, and how things may go based on your school decisions and responses. There’s more randomness to Mushroom Musume, so you can’t 100% plot out and guarantee similar sorts of experience each time.

Also, it’s short! I got through my first run in about 30-40 minutes? Maybe it was even a bit less? (I was taking some screenshots and dawdling a bit.) Considering how much can happen and the variations, I honestly wish each run lasted a bit longer. In games like Princess Maker and Umamusume, you really get a chance to know and value your virtual daughters, and I didn’t experience that same kind of connection due to Mushroom Musume’s brevity even though I enjoyed each experience.

The one thing I do wish Mushroom Musume better explained is that the “color” direction early on affects the color palette for the rest of the game. Some of the decisions can make it a little difficult or uncomfortable to read. I wish there was more information at this point about that decision, so you could know what you’re getting into before making a choice.

Mushroom Musume is a whimsical approach to the Princess Maker genre, while still being a game that could get dark or a little unsettling depending on the choices you make for your character. It goes quite quickly and it’s really easy to make things work, eliminate some of the dangers or disheartening endings other stat-based raising titles can present. This makes uncovering different types of mushroom daughters and seeing new events easier. However, I do wish runs lasted a little longer considering how much potential there is for each child.

Mushroom Musume is available for PCs.