With its release a week away, a new Dr. Mario World trailer has unveiled the game’s new multiplayer component, breaking down the basic game mechanics.
The much-anticipated new mobile game, set for a July 10 release, follows the Dr. Mario franchise’s classic and exceedingly addictive, Tetris-esque, match-three puzzle format. But this new installment has a new feature to set it apart: multiplayer mode.
In the kiddish new trailer, a narrator, who sounds a lot like a children’s show announcer, explains that players can link the app to their Facebook or Line accounts to play with friends.
You can track your friends’ progress, send them some extra stamina in the form of a heart and challenge them to real-time matches in the game’s versus mode.
The trailer gives us a preview of these matches and explains the special skills that each classic character, from Dr. Peach to Dr. Toad, possesses. (It seems like everyone in the Mushroom Kingdom has a medical degree.) Princess Peach, for example, can delete a random column, while Toad can delete five random objects anywhere across the board.
But it’s not all special skills. Your stats are also important in these head-to-head battles as you try to infect your friends. Players with higher attack values can chuck more viruses at you and players with higher defense have a stronger immunity against the viruses. So it’s like Pokémon, but with doctors instead of adorable monsters.
Dr. Mario World launches on iOS and Android on July 10. It’s free to download the app and all five of the worlds to explore come with it, though, of course, there will be for-pay elements involved.