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Mobile Monsters: A ‘Mutation Mash’ Preview
Wading into the vicious but ankle-deep waters of phone gaming can be daunting, especially since the advent of microtransactions and “freemium” style games have made most people cynical of their aims. You never quite know if the game is difficult or just trying to sell you something. The games themselves can often be incessantly pushy wastes of one’s time, self-hampering, poorly-designed, and frustrating in lots of cases.
However, Mutation Mash, from Upopa Games, combines a few existing pocket game types into a weird but stylish package. As a fan of Plants vs. Zombies, I’m too-often intrigued by grid-based puzzle games with cute, otherworldly designs, and Mutation Mash definitely fits that characterization in the best possible way. It looks kind of like a Pop Cap game, and it kind of plays like one, too. It’s also sleek and well-designed and easy to understand, so it’s kind of perfect for its intended purpose.
On a mechanical level, the mobile game inversely approaches the idea of Plants vs. Zombies. Rather than plant or build defensive structures, players strategically meld together adorably misshapen woodland creatures by moving them around on the aforementioned grid.
To glom more references and influences onto this game, it’s also kind of like Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine turned on one side.
As players progress, they gather coins — expected — and a pink resource called goo. It has to do with the method with which players use their Dr. Moreau-ian powers to blend and collect the animals in each stage. So long as players succeed at levels, they reap the goo reward. Fail, and it costs a varying amount of goo to replay a level.
The game has a “goo doubler” that runs as you play the game, so if you hit a level wall, you’ll have to wait for your goo to replenish so you can progress. If not, you’ll be forced to buy your way through via mictrotransactions, which I know everyone sort of hates, but it’s really not done poorly in Mutation Mash.
The touch interface is responsive, the swipe controls are simple and intuitive, and the rules are easy to understand. Each level’s objectives are communicated just before play begins, and the goo / coin risk is clearly labeled.
Also, the game looks great. The creatures are well-designed. They’re cute but also strange-looking. Collecting them apparently adds them to a farm, where — I guess — their mutated-ness makes them ripe for goo harvesting. In a way, you as the player are subjugating cutesy animals for the sake of your own ends. Kind of like Dr. Robotnik.
So far, the game possesses an appropriate amount of variety to keep players interested. The freemium push-in isn’t quite so heinous, either, so it’s overall a pretty streamlined experience. Compared to the constant reminders to buy stuff in, say, Plants vs. Zombies 2, Mutation Mash is relatively inoffensive.
With some updates and continued support, Mutation Mash could be a pocket game to keep handy on your phone. Its colorful, wacky aesthetic and bite-sized levels make it perfect for small slivers of time, so pick it up. The game is currently available on Android devices and will be available soon for Apple users. Find the game online at Upopa.com.
Let’s start with the good news. Lockbox looks far better than its misleading marketing materials suggest, a supernatural horror movie so darkly lit and color graded that you’ll have to squint your way through jump scares. It’s also anchored by reliable genre performers. That’s also about where the good news ends with this rote adaptation of Knifepoint Horror Podcast story “Winthrop.”
The empathetic Carla Gugino gives her all as Ellen, a saint of a woman with boundless patience who takes on life’s hard luck with a kind smile. After giving up her career as a fashion designer to become caretaker for a dying mother, she’s then forced to reinvent herself once more when her caretaker role ends. That catches us up to the events of Lockbox, where Ellen is asked to take in a cousin she hasn’t seen in quite some time who’s dealing with severe PTSD.
Just as Ellen finally establishes a real connection with Winthrop (Lou Taylor Pucci), it’s interrupted by the arrival of peculiar neighbor Vahna (Katharine Isabelle), who spells clear trouble. When Vahna shows up dead, it sets in motion a supernatural battle of possession.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
Director Daniel Stamm (The Last Exorcism, Prey for the Devil) and screenwriter Justin Yoffe approach Lockbox in the broadest of brushstrokes, dooming it from the start with clunky storytelling and woefully underdeveloped themes of heady topics like PTSD. Winthrop is a character that comes loaded with emotional baggage and trauma that’s piled on throughout his tragic life, but much like its title, his interiority and history are treated like a tightly guarded secret meant to prolong the supernatural mystery.
The problem here, though, is that Lockbox is too sparse to sustain mystery at all, and it instead robs Winthrop of characterization. It winds up trapping the talented Pucci without anywhere to go, toggling between wounded animal and mentally disoriented.
From there, Lockbox bounds through plot developments without any sense of stakes or purpose, peppered by a smattering of haphazard paint-by-numbers jump scares. The only unwavering constant is Ellen’s resolute faith, and Stamm seems to leave it entirely to Gugino to guide confused audiences through this inconsequential story right up until its supernatural climax.
Image Credit: Aura entertainment
To give more credit, Lockbox at least injects an unconventional exorcism here; just don’t expect much in the way of explanation. When the film finally reveals the meaning behind its title, it dangles a fascinating carrot it has zero interest in delivering. More than a severe lack of fleshing out its characters beyond plot drivers or devices, this faith-based flick also seems terrified to offer any worldbuilding whatsoever.
Yoffe’s script stretches the short story beyond its means instead of fleshing it out, and Stamm fills out the gaps with cheap CGI scares and overwrought performances; Isabelle’s Vahna is beyond cartoonish in her villainy. It’s also pretty nonsensical, treating only Ellen’s faith with the utmost sincerity and largely squandering its typically reliable talent. So much so that the final imagery, pure sunkissed saccharine sentimentality, leaves you with the feeling that this horror movie might be better suited as an entry in Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Lockbox releases in select theaters on July 3, 2026.
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