It's kind of interesting to see and play old fangames from over ten years ago that clearly were just a glimpse of something greater, but also kind of sad. This game in particular is only "chapter one" of what I'm sure was intended to be a multi-chapter series. Never seemed to make it past this first one, though, which is a shame, because there's promise here. As you can tell from the cover art, it's heavily inspired by Super Paper Mario, and it uses the design of that game, though it's also much more of a straight platformer, with... I guess puzzle elements? Not even exactly puzzles, but leading to what would probably have been puzzles in later entries.

I really liked the idea of using different hammers as different items for separate purposes, and I also liked the idea of badges from the first two Paper Mario games being used in the context of a standard Mario platformer (makes me wish Super Paper Mario had them), and sort of a precursor to what Mario Wonder would eventually get.

Maybe that's giving this too much credit, especially since the only badge (afaik) is just to allow you to jump on spiked enemies. Would have been interesting to see how it might evolve, and also to see if they carried over between chapters somehow.

Anyway, it's nothing too special, but could have been cool to see more.




by the way, the story here is that an evil toad lights toad's house on fire, steals his wife, and toad's son dies in the fire. this dude's gonna become the punisher