I didn't realize this was ever released. I beta tested multiple versions of this, and it's such a fun, vibrant quest. I think the heart of the quest is really what makes it so fun. Yloh is having fun making the quest and being creative and that fun translates to the player's experience. This isn't the most technically perfect 5/5 quest, it's not trying to be, but it is a fun one with a lot of heart which deserves top marks.

While I originally started playing MFH two years ago, when the quest was new, I unfortunately abandoned the quest at that time. I became stuck in World 4, without the item from World 3, and ultimately just became distracted by something else and stopped playing. Man, what a loss that was for me, because as it turns out, this quest is deep, rich, and indeed unlike any other quest in the ZC world. Better late than never, I suppose, I restarted MFH last month and am nearing the end of the journey. Make no mistake, MFH is a journey and a bit of an ordeal, but what a rewarding trial at the same time.

The core strength and most appealing quality to MFH is definitely the gameplay. I would call it a traditional dungeon romper with heavy addition of Metroidvania, and trending more towards an atypical Metroidvania, in that there are two central and highly networked 8x16 maps that the player will traverse over and over again in order to reach new dungeons, sub-dungeons, and treasures. There are also plenty of opportunities to return to past dungeons and areas for new exploration and to progress in the quest. For those reasons, those screens that are seemingly impossible, or simply innocuous at first glance, almost always become very relevant at a later time. I highly recommend taking notes of suspicious screens when you play - and at one time, my list was a good 25x bulletpoints of things to come back to or be on the lookout for - because due to the size of the two central maps, you will very likely forget something important and get lost. MFH definitely rewards exploration and the player can grow strong and gain other advantages from recalling previous areas and returning for certain items and power ups.

The gameplay also accommodates different play styles and a little bit of sequence breaking if you wish. You can play with finesse and at a distance, because there are ample rupee, bomb, and arrow drops and the ammo is cheap. You can tank damage a little bit and be on the offense, because there are ample health drops and HCPs to be found. Or, you can do a bit of both by finding the wand and super-secret shop relatively early on. Strong gameplay is also central to the dungeon design and each dungeon's respective gimmicks. While the dungeons are not always good or enjoyable - Dimensional Starship, I'm looking in your direction - the dungeons are always executed in an imaginative way. Like Eddy mentions, the Prismatic Maze is a fresh spin on the familiar peg dungeon and taken to another echelon by a unique and novel gimmick. You will need to employ all of your skills to advance, like reflexes, timing, evasion, item tricks, combat readiness, observation, and more in order to conquer MFH.

I can honestly forgive the heavy amounts of instant-death traps, trolls, and borderline-insane difficulty at times because the gameplay is so strong. MFH is created and inspired by the sort of philosophies that went into 80s NES and Atari games: the graphics are not great at best and rather garish at times, so there better be some tasty carrot on a string to keep the player persevering towards the goal and interested in progressing. For better and for worse, MFH captures that 80s gaming essence because the quest is quite addictive and you will find yourself inexplicably coming back to play, over and over again, even after you rage quit 30 minutes prior. Like a lot of old-schools games, MFH often forces the player to tediously repeat sequences or long rows of screens, evading death all along the way, until you finally reach that elusive checkpoint. However, like when I played those games back in the 80s, I don't even care that the game expects me to play perfectly over and over these screens again and again, because I want to reach the goal, damn it.

The story and plot of MFH is, while novel and darkly humorous, also a bit of a big old clusterfuck. Imagine if you threw the entire contents of your kitchen pantry in an industrial-sized blender - like some sort of sinister episode of Food Network's Chopped: what results is going to be complex and even possibly appealing, but also excessive and not a cohesive creation. MFH does this by integrating all of those 80s and 90s games upon which the creator was obviously inspired. What that means is that you're going to be seeing Mega Man references one minute, then Sonic references, then Halo references, and then heaps of pop-culture references and more and more to the extent that you forget you're playing a ZC quest. Yet despite all the odds, this reference excess somehow works when you remember the motives of the quest's antagonist. MFH isn't the sort of reference excess like the Final Fantasy III rom hack Return of the Dark Sorcerer, where all of these references are seemingly thrown in just because, but strangely seem logical and plausible when you remember that Mike is an omnipotent sadist with limitless resources, and this is his funhouse. Unfortunately, if you weren't raised and playing video games in the 80s and 90s, the flood of references will be lost on you. If you are an old nerd, though, you'll "get" the plot and probably appreciate the intricacies of it.

Difficulty wise, you've probably heard or otherwise suspect that MFH is a brutal challenge quest. While there are certain sequences and stretches of the quest that are bordering on, or legitimate-insane difficulty, for varying reasons, I have to honestly say that the overall average difficulty is a solid moderate level. I'm a ZC veteran and moderately skilled I think, which is not to humble-brag but rather to put my opinion in perspective. I balk at something like the Armageddon quests for being so tediously difficult, combat focused and requiring the player to avoid being hit at all costs, that I don't find them particularly fun at all; but at the same time also find many popular ZC quests to be easier than I was hoping for. MFH seems to strike a difficulty balance in that the really difficult stretches are surrounded by more reasonable difficulty to the extent that things are never overwhelming for too long. A lot of the difficulty in MFH is not combat related either, like in most challenge quests, but rather the difficulty lies in discovering what to do, how to navigate, and how to progress. I think if you have the skills to beat 80s games like Wizards and Warriors, Donkey Kong, or Ghouls and Goblins, that MFH is definitely doable for you without losing the fun factor because things are too difficult.

Graphics and screen design is, well, very utilitarian as I mentioned in comparison to old-school video games. The music choices range from lots of familiar midis to some novel ones that you probably can't identify so easily - a bit of a mixed bag but also mostly nothing remarkable. Overall, I have had a great time playing through the quest and will probably play again in the future once the creator finishes the remodel that is in the works. You will undoubtedly rage quit from time to time, and probably rage quit over and over again, but do yourself a favor and don't quit playing entirely like I did two years ago. Mike's Funhouse has a lot to offer for the persistent and patient player, even though the quest requires you to be patient and persistent in order to see what it has to offer.

I gotta say, I am pleasantly surprised by this quest. I beat this last night with almost 700 deaths and about 30 hours or so and I enjoyed it all the way through. There is an insane amount of creativity and innovation in this quest, and a ton of things I've never seen done before, so this certainly makes it one of the most innovative quests I've ever played. In terms of the difficulty, I honestly didn't think it was that hard in a lot of places, despite my very high death count. As a matter of fact, a lot of the deaths were caused by me experimenting around with stuff to see the variety of ways to die, and a bit of trial and error stuff in some places (Simon says...... shudder), but in terms of actual combat and navigation, it didn't feel as hard as I was expecting. Maybe I was too invested in stuff I just didn't realise my death count was inflating like mad There were certainly a few challenging moments though, but they felt very rewarding to accomplish and I really like the fact that you could tackle some minibosses and enemies early on if you wish, but you're also given the option to come back later when you're more prepared, which allows for some neat backtracking to earlier areas of the Main Lobby and especially back to Zone 2 quite often. The difficulty in general I would say is actually very fair and scaled up quite nicely throughout the quest, with the exception of one instance I'll mention later.

Talking about zones, all the zones were very unique in their own way, even Zone 1 honestly despite it being a generic world. It's hard to pinpoint a favourite zone in general, but I would say the Prismatic Maze is my favourite dungeon of the quest. It feels like such a new fresh way of doing the "red/blue blocks" gimmick you see in a lot of quests as well as new ways to combine colours for even more usage of the gimmick. Also the fact the whole dungeon itself changes with enemies, paths etc made it all that enjoyable. I just love that dungeon in general, didn't want it to end lol. The humour and references were very rich in this game, so many characters here and there I recognised and quite a lot of humorous moments between them, and even for some deaths too. It's also nice to see my tutorial get shouted out at the very end, I really didn't think people still use those old videos of mine, I really appreciate that

I can't exactly think of many negatives, but one in particular that stands out to me is that raft maze to get to Zone 2. I feel like it was probably the only bad segment of the quest where things didn't feel very fair due to the way ZC's raft works with having the fork flags everywhere, so it became quite a struggle to get to places with the input lag, even when I did know the way forwards. Sadly this just made that segment too frustrating, but I do like the idea. Initially, I was going to be quite critical of the graphics and tile usage since the early places admittedly don't look too good imo, but as I went on it started to feel a less significant to me due to gameplay obviously being the main focus here. The quest did look much better beyond Zone 3 or so, so it's not too big of a deal. What I will say though is that some of the design is a little inconsistent in places, since I noticed a few tile errors, especially with mountains, and weird graphical things here and there (which I will list), so some of things could still be refined a bit more even though I know this probably wasn't too big of a focus. Though it's still good to go back and fix up a few things.

So talking about that stuff, I've compiled a list of weird things I came across. Feel free to check it out here. If some things were actually intentional then my bad, you can ignore them lol.

Overall, I had an absolute blast playing this quest. It was so much more enjoyable than I was expecting and I'm glad I stuck around the whole way. I still have yet to do the 3rd Simon Says level for the bonus content since idk if I have the energy to go through another one of those right now, but I'll probably come back to it in the future and clear it as well as the superboss. I'll be giving this quest a 4.5/5, which rounds up to a 5. You did a great job with this quest IMO, you should be proud of yourself man.

One of the best quests ever.

Mike's Fun House. The place of your death. As one of the first quests I've played in years, it starts off with jokes, memes, and an overall unique flavor to it that almost lures you in to keep going, no matter how high your death counter gets. You start out with absolutely nothing but two rules that must be followed at all times, and a simple goal: Escape. This goal is hampered by countless traps, but in the course of my playthrough, I cannot think of any that were truly unfair. Over time, the game gives you various equipment to work with, opening up new routes to work your way deeper into the house and towards the end goal.

By itself, that would be a good quest, but Yloh has also done quite an excellent job with the overall design. Each dungeon feels unique and often has witty dialog for many things. Even certain instant kills are given a one or two liner to describe just how horribly you were killed. Thankfully, most of those instant kills simply take you to the start of the room, or area, notably in Pizza Slice rooms and other quest critical locations that would be a nightmare to get back to. Yloh ensures you feel like you earned every little bit of progression you get, and ramps it up further in each successive level with new mechanics to learn and master. There are even a few parts of the quest where you can somewhat break the sequence by defeating certain enemies well in advance, and it feels like this was accounted for. You're rewarded by breaking the sequence, too: in my playthrough, I was able to get the Wand early, which helped ease the difficulty for the first half of the game.

My only complaint is that Level 4 is an utter mess, and I did not enjoy it as much as the other levels, though its dungeon has a neat concept. I also encountered a few bugs while playing, though only one was triggered completely by accident: I managed to fall through the floor in a side view area, but I was unable to replicate it. The other bugs were purely on me, and cannot be triggered accidentally, and may even be fixed now, as Yloh has frequently updated the quest. Overall, I enjoyed myself while playing, and hope that someday, Yloh will make another quest for us to be tormented by. Play this one if you like memes, countless references to other series, and hilarious deaths.

First playthrough death counter: 816.