Erin's Extreme Avatar Guide:Mutant Graveyard of Doom

Mutant Graveyard of Doom is one of those fun games that combines problem solving and adventure. I must admit, I’m a little afraid of the dark., which made playing Mutant Graveyard of Doom slightly more challenging than I expected. All those creepy creatures cornering me in the dark was disconcerting, but once I mastered a few tricks and picked up some strategies on finding treats, I discovered how much I actually enjoyed this haunted game.

The Basics

You play Albert, a kacheek who has been enslaved by the famed hungry Esophagor. Albert must navigate his way around graveyards to find treats for The Esophagor, and it’s up to you to get them. That’s right—you’re not even helping poor Albert escape from the graveyard! What a tragic game.

Avoid the spooky petpets out to get you as you navigate your way through the maze. If you bump into a baddie, your candle will get dimmer and dimmer, as if the darkness is closing in on you. If you bump into too many petpets, your candle will go out and your game will end! At full brightness, your candle will reach pretty far across the screen. At the beginning of the game, your candle is at full strength, but if you run into baddies three times without grabbing a Pink Apple Lantern (more on those below), you lose the game.

Always look beyond where your candle lights to look for items and baddies coming your way. You can often see their shadows at the edges of your candlelight, and this can be a good way to scope out where your final spooky food item is.

Use your arrow keys to direct Albert around the screen and the spacebar to knock tombstones down and get to different areas around the game. You must collect 7-10 spooky foods on each level to find, and these items are listed on the top of your screen. The items are opaque until you find them and then they appear in full color.

Foods & Special Items

Each spooky food you collect is worth 10 points. There are five different foods you can collect in this game, and it’s good to remember what they look like when you’re searching for them in the dark. They are:

-Deviled Steak

-Ghost Marshmallows

-Bloody Ghost Toast

-Eye Candy

-Vanilla Ghost Cake

There are also a handful of special items in the game that can help or hurt you while you search through the graveyard. Collecting these items will give you 10 additional points.

Pink Spooky Popcorn – This increases your speed, which can be incredibly helpful if you need to run away from a baddie barreling after you. Collecting too many of these can make the game difficult to navigate, so try to balance them out with Almost Gummy Rats (discussed below) if you feel like you’re moving too quickly and out of control. Moving too quickly can also cause the game to lag a bit and you can accidentally crash into a baddie.

Almost Gummy Rat (Strawberry) – This decreases your speed. It’s generally bothersome and I avoid grabbing these as much as possible unless I’ve grabbed too many Pink Spooky Popcorns.

Mummified Negg –These reduce your candle’s brightness by one grade. If your candle is already at its dimmest, your game will end! If you are going for the avatar score, pick these up at your own risk and only grab them if you are near the end of the level and your candle is at full brightness.

Pink Apple Lantern – This increases your candle’s brightness by one grade. Go after these as much as possible because they will make your game much easier!

The Baddies

Spooky petpets are haunting the graveyard and out to get you. Chumablahs and Jowards meander around the maze trying to find you, but they can’t travel through tombstones or other barriers in the game and their movements are predictable. Ghostkerchiefs are tricker. They can walk through tombstones and directly onto you, dimming your candle.

The most difficult baddies are the evil tombstones that come to life. They wander around trying to find you, but often they sit down next to other tombstones and barriers to blend in with their surroundings. When you talk toward them, they will spring to life, grow arms and legs, and attack you. They are always blank tombstones with triangles on top, so watch out for these and take note of any tombstones that seem out of place; they are possibly the hardest to spot and avoid, but once you memorize what they look like you’ll catch on quickly.

Strategy

As you navigate through the levels, watch for tombstones without any markings or engravings on them. These can be knocked down using the spacebar to clear a path to a part of the level you might not be able to access otherwise. Use these tombstones to your advantage—if you kick a tombstone down on top of a baddie, you will receive an extra 50 points! This is key to getting the avatar. For the first few levels, wander around avoiding baddies and collecting all foods except for your last item. Then, align yourself next to the unmarked tombstones and wait for a baddie to wander in front. Once a baddie is in front of the tombstone, knock it down for an extra 50 points. Do this with all the unmarked tombstones on the level for maximum points. Be careful while you’re doing this! Don’t let a baddie sneak up from behind and dim your candle. Use this strategy for levels 1-3.

In the later levels when your corridors are more narrow and fewer Pink Apple Lanterns are available, kick down the unmarked gravestones as you find them instead of waiting for a baddie to be in range. You’ll need the extra space to escape the baddies as they attack.

Tips & Tricks

If you have a slower computer, this game can lag pretty badly. Play on a lower resolution and close all your other programs.

Make sure you have collected as many extra items as possible per level and knocked out as many baddies as you can before you collect your last spooky food to maximize your points, especially on the earlier levels. If you maximize your points early, you can focus on finding spooky foods in the later levels where your passages are narrow and Pink Apple Lanterns are scarce.

Play the game frequently! The levels are always laid out the same way, and the items are always in the same locations. Once you get used to the game, you will complete it faster improve your score tremendously.