The Music Box is like a visual novel and Resident Evil had crossed paths. The game is very well written with the Mario cast and a set of characters made for the game having great character arcs and storybeats. The mansion itself gives off a very spooky vibe, while also keeping the player wanting to explore more of it as to help Mario find a way out of the mansion. The main part of the gameplay is going around the mansion and exploring every nook and cranny for clues to make progress in Mario’s escape. There are also very many choices that a player can make to to help Mario progress forward in the mansion or get one of many death scenes that are present in the game. So be sure to save often. Despite being an RPG maker game, I could only count two times where a fight would occur. While that would bother me in other games, The Music Box actually brings up tensions during its normal gameplay and uses the two fights to amplify that tension (as they are both placed near two different endings). For a game made in RPG maker, this games visuals are very impressive. The sprite work and lighting are fantastic for this title and really helps in selling that unsettling feeling. Having hand drawn pictures to show case certain scenes and paint a better picture of the surroundings. There is also the music, ranging from very atmospheric, emotional, and that boss fight feeling when it needs to be. My favorite being V.S. Alice, as it is a upbeat/haunting piece to listen to during that encounter. Overall, if there was ever a thought about what a Mario horror game would be, then this game should be tried. Even without the Mario characters I feel that this game could still stand on its own. Shouldn’t need to be said at this point, but at least give it a try.

Before having actually played Mario: The Music Box, most of what I knew was that it was a fairly standard RPG Maker horror game… which made the strange decision of starring the Super Mario Bros, of all people. Having now been able to play it myself, I have to say… yeah what an absolutely baffling choice. Like, way to just completely undercut the serious horror tone you’re going for. It’s hard to take the descriptions of all your gruesome fates so seriously when the main character is making Mario noises as he gets impaled through the throat. It’s hard to really read the interactions between you and the very edgy and serious original characters the way the developer intended when they’re anime OCs and Mario is precisely half their size. Maybe if it leaned into the premise a little and treated it in more of a… black comedy sort of way (watch Mario die over and over and over and over-) but as it stands it’s… caught in a little bit of a catch-22: Mario being the main character undercuts everything the tone is going for, but were Mario not in this game at all… there wouldn’t really be much notable about this, honestly.

The plot follows Mario, of the Super Mario Bros as he investigates an abandoned house on the edges of the Mushroom Kingdom. Upon finding a mysterious music box, Mario soon finds zombie ghosts converging in on him, and he now cannot leave this place. Now he, Luigi, and The Third Mario Brother Byakuya Togami a stranger named Riba must find a way through the horrors of the house, with danger lurking along every corner the game explicitly warns you not to go down. Amidst it, one particular entity places its sight on Mario, and what follows is a conflict: one for Mario’s body, and one for Mario’s sanity………………………………………………………..

I’ll give this game credit: there’s an insane amount of effort put into it. That’s not a “you tried” sort of thing: the production value in this game is insane. Every story event, ending, and death has multiple hand-illustrated CGs visually depicting whatever’s happening. There are precisely 559 of these — multiple for each event — and they do a lot to show what’s happening, beyond the limits of what you can do with RPGmaker (unless you’re really good at sprite animation) and helping make each death feel, theoretically, that much more impactful. The sprite art, both for the characters and the general environment, is fairly aesthetically pleasing, even if the low saturation made seeing certain things sort of a pain. There are also, like, just straight-up custom animations made in the same style as the CG, both for… a Kingdom Hearts or When They Cry-esque opening video and also for a fully stylized RPG boss fight in one of the endings. Even with games such as Ib or The Witch’s House, most of what they had was limited to pixel art and ways to play around RPGMaker limitations. This… goes on a whole different level in terms of production value, and you can really tell that this game was made by an artist.

…You can also tell, however, that this game wasn’t made by a writer. This goes beyond the whole “story expects to be taken deathly seriously while also starring Mario” thing. For as much as the art works to make the many deaths you suffer feel evocative, the writing… does the opposite. Characters just matter-of-factly describe the way they die, and the sameyness (and also clunkiness) of these descriptions does a lot to undercut how varied and sometimes visceral these death sequences can be. Maybe if they were shorter, and leaned towards the visuals rather than the written, then they’d be more effective, but as stands most of them felt drawn out and kinda clunky. The plot, too, for as seriously it takes itself, has… issues. There’s a lot of characters (and also through this a lot of characters who just… drop out of the narrative) a lot of re-explanations of things the game forgot it already told the player, and a lot of cases where… the narrative doesn’t really have the effect it’s intending. Like, yes, this person who murdered their entire extended family because she wanted to be immortal like her boyfriend sure is actually a sympathetic victim of society. The titular music box… sure does matter a lot in the story. Ultimately, like, yes, it is incredibly silly that this story stars the Mario Brothers… but even if that wasn't there to undercut everything I really don't think this plot and story would be able to stand on its own.

And game-design wise… it’s no Ib or Witch’s House. The area design… leans linear, but areas are large enough that at points it’s easy to get lost on what you’re meant to do next. Puzzles… are mostly the sort of bread and butter “put a key in this keyhole to put a key into another keyhole-” that… doesn’t really feel all that unique or fun to play out — honestly, most of the puzzles I saw here were already things I’d seen in other games. Deaths are… very telegraphed: rather than the sudden, brutal ends you’d receive even if you thought you were going the right way, you’re kind of blatantly suggested that you shouldn’t go down this path and if you do then you get an overtly prolonged description as to why the obvious mistake was, in fact, a mistake. They’re also a little samey in that regard: literally every time you deal with a possessed person the answer is to violence the ghost out of them. Every time you're given the option to try to jump — y'know, like Mario is oft to do — it fails and you die. In terms of RPGMaker horror games it’s on the less ingenious end, and that could be fine… but I think the specific horror gameplay tropes they lean into are kind of the more irritating ones to deal with.

And in the end, when… a lot of the individual elements don’t really hold under scrutiny, and the only thing that particularly stands out in the first place is the strange decision to use Mario as the main protagonist, it’s easy to tell how this game has the little bit of infamy it has. And while there would be a way to make these particular ideas work, here… they don’t. Not in the way the developer intended. 4/10.

not sure if i like the game or if i've been stockholm syndromed into liking it

but on a more serious note, i think the game has some great moments and some not so great. i was never a fan of Q team. an amnesiac, a serial killer and some whiny "nice guy" isn't the best combo. but i pushed through those fragments.

the highlight of the game was d team. i loved phi and sigma in the second game and i adore diana. every scene with those three was amazing.

c team had great moments and some i did not care about that much. but nothing negative that comes to my mind right away.

some of the games scenes were very funny, without even intending to be that. and i love the fun easter eggs the game has to offer or small lines when you tap on certain things in escape rooms.

the decision aspect of the game was very fun. i enjoyed seeing which choices would get me killed and which ones were the right ones. i probably shouldn't have trusted sigma as much as i did, since that usually got me killed–

the different endings were all decent. some better and some just not. i even enjoyed the true ending / final ending, despite the cliffhanger. because even if you had gotten to make a final decision, would it really have mattered? it was a lose-lose situation. or at the very least, you wouldn't gain anything from doing anything. you lost and you won.