Nintendo showed off some of Dr. Mario World‘s multiplayer features ahead of the mobile game’s July 10 launch, including the send Hearts feature and Versus mode.
The game’s original announcement mentioned players can send their friends Hearts, in-game items players have to spend so they can challenge the game’s stages. No other details were given at the time, but the recent multiplayer trailer confirmed that’s basically all there is to it: select a friend from your list in the game, and choose how many Hearts you want to send.
There don’t seem to be any limits on how many Hearts you can send, but of course, the maximum number of hearts a player can hold at a time is still five.
However, it appears actually creating a friends list is dependent on linking social media accounts, and for now, only Facebook and Line are supported. Once a friend is included in the player’s friends list, both can keep track of each other’s level progress and rankings.
It wouldn’t be a Dr. Mario game — or a match-three puzzler, for that matter — without some competition, and Dr. Mario World offers that in its Versus mode. Two players can challenge each other to see who can survive the longest before their stage is filled with viruses.
To keep things interesting, the game lets players send viruses to their opponent’s stage from time to time. How effective these viral assaults are depends on the Doctor the player chooses; those with higher defense, like Dr. Bowser for instance, aren’t affected as drastically by incoming viruses.
As mentioned in the Dr. Mario World announcement, each Doctor has special skills they can use after filling up their Skill Meter, and these carry over to Versus mode as well. They offer a variety of advantages: for instance, Toad can clear five random objects, and Peach can clear a random column.
There’s still no word on how many Doctors the game will offer, but the multiplayer trailer did show the Koopalings taking part in Versus battles. We don’t get to see them kitted out as full-on Doctors, though it seems like they’ll bring their own unique skills as well, which means plenty of variety in playstyles — once you spend the Diamonds needed to unlock them, naturally.
