Dorodango review: who would have guessed making mud balls wouldn’t be fun?

Japan-based liica Inc. hopes to bring out the kid in you, along with some cash, in its newest game Dorodango for iOS and Mobile devices. How, you ask? By making mud balls. Yes, that’s right. Mud balls. Sound fun? Well it’s not, but what it lacks in fun it makes up for in WTF surprises.

Dorodango, meaning mud dumpling, is a simple game. Using your finger, you simply move a ball of mud around in the palm of your hand. The faster you roll the ball, the bigger the it will get. You’ve only got 15 seconds to make as big of a mud ball as possible, but if you hit the sweet spot you will receive a few bonus seconds to your time. The bigger the mud ball, the more points you will receive, and the happier your dorodangos will be.

Once you run out of time, your finished product is presented to you. And what do you do with this fine piece of craftsmanship? You quickly smash it with one firm karate chop, revealing a random prize. These prizes can be anything ranging from stickers to knives, but they don’t do anything for the game. You simply collect them in your notebook.On top of an awful premise, Dorodango suffers from an abusive relationship with ads. They are clingy, cover a large part of the screen, and are constant. There are even times where you just can’t get to the menu buttons because ads are in the way.

On top of its ads, liica tries to sell ‘Premium Mud’ as an in-app purchase in Dorodango. You may be able to make some better mud balls out of this premium mud, but it’s not going to change the terrible gameplay.

The music is awful, the gameplay is terrible, and the ads make it almost unplayable. There are some funny prizes to be won, but Dorodango is hardly worth playing.

If you still want to see the absurdity in action, you can download it at the Apple Store or at Google Play. This is a Japan exclusive, so unfortunately, if you don’t have a Japanese account you are going to miss out on all of the fun.

If you want to see the game in action, check out the awesome mud ball I made!