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Muck - TV Tropes

  • ️Sun Dec 15 2024

Muck is a Roguelike Survival Sandbox developed by Daniel Sooman, also known online as Dani, following him taking up a dare from a Youtube comment that ended up spiraling into a full game. It released for free on June 5, 2021, with Dani releasing two videos detailing the game's development.

The premise is simple: you and up to 7 other players are trapped on a remote island and must gather resources, craft tools and items, keep your health and hunger topped up, and eventually repair a boat that you'll use to escape to safety. To aid you are various treasure chests scattered across the world with randomized power-ups, some of which are unlocked and others requiring you open them with coins from slain monsters, as well as scattered settlements that are willing to trade with you if you've got the cash. Standing in your path to escape are the hordes of goblins, kobolds, golems, and other baddies that will endlessly pursue you, growing exponentially in strength and number with every passing day.

Not to be confused with the trope MUCK (multiuser text-oriented game that emphasizes role-playing and player intervention).

Muck provides examples of:

  • Achievement Mockery: You get an achievement named "Big Mistake" just for opening the game for the first time. There are also achievements for dying enough times and another for drowning (which is surprisingly difficult for how unforgiving the game is).
  • Achilles' Heel: Stone-based enemies, like the golems or Big Chunk, takes massive damage from Pickaxe blows, in some cases making them more effective than a dedicated sword or bow. The elemental Daves that show up are also weak to their opposing elements (with the Wyvern also being weak to Lightning), although elemental attacks are far less common, being only available from the arrows crafted from the Daves' Rare Random Drops.
  • Airborne Mook: The flying dragons that show up during later nights, commonly called Wyverns. Good luck facing them without a ranged weapon or jump upgrades.
  • Artificial Stupidity: As relentless as the enemies are, their AI isn't exactly the smartest. They're often somewhat slow on the uptake when it comes to attacking or chasing, are prone to getting stuck on terrain, and will usually try to destroy structures instead of attacking players. Most of them (with the notable exception of the Guardians' crystal spike) also don't lead their attacks, meaning circle-strafing is usually a surefire tactic to bring down smaller groups.
  • BFS: Gronk dual-wields two, which you can get for yourself if you get lucky with drops and assemble his sword.
  • Easter Egg: There's a rare chance you can find Billy, the main character of Dani's upcoming game Karlson, on the world map, who will then tell you to wishlist said game and give you an achievement.
  • Elite Mooks: "Buff" versions of enemies, indicated by a larger size and a red skull over their HP bars, can replace normal enemy spawns with increasing frequency as you go on, and are guaranteed to spawn if you manually summon enemies from a totem. In exchange for their greatly increased HP, they drop more money and items on death, while killing a totem squad will always drop an item.
  • Fantasy Metals: The tiers of ore you can harvest from lowest to highest are Iron, Mithril, Adamantite, and, of all things, Obamium. There also exists Gold which can be mined and directly turned into money, or Chunkium that only drops from the Big Chunk boss.
  • Final Boss: Once you build the boat and set sail, Bob will ambush you and serve as the last enemy you must kill to win. He's fittingly got the biggest move pool in the whole game, on top of being a Damage-Sponge Boss extraordinaire designed to outlast an endgame build while doing enough damage to kill one in one or two shots.note 
  • Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The difficulties range from Easy, to Normal, to Gamer.
  • Increasingly Lethal Enemy: All enemies and bosses scale their stats and spawn rate exponentially with every passing day, putting you on an urgent time limit to complete all your objectives and/or grow stronger before they become too overwhelming.
  • Inexplicable Treasure Chests: These will be your main source of permanent upgrades. Black and green chests are open by default, while brown, blue, and gold chests need increasing amounts of money to open (which also scales with day), but drop better items. There's also the elusive Chief's Chest that sometimes spawns with villages, which can be looted for high-quality goods in exchange for enraging all the villagers.
  • Infinity -1 Sword: While gear made from Adamantite and Obamium aren't necessarily the best around, they're easier to get since they don't rely on chance drops, and are still enough to let a skilled player carve through bosses and end the game. There's also the Ancient Bow and Wyvern Dagger, crafted from materials dropped rarely by basic enemies, which outclass the majority of ore-based weapons but are outclassed by boss-grade weapons in turn.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: Weapons and armor crafted from boss-exclusive materials tend to eclipse all other gear in the game, and while not instantly winning the run, will give you a huge step towards victory. These include Big Chunk's Chunky Hammer and Chunkium Armor, Gronk's Sword, Chief's Spear, and the Night Blade from the Guardians. The Night Blade, in particular, stands above the others: not only does it have the highest killing power of any weapon,note  lowest drop chance for its components, and steepest resource requirement, you get an achievement just for picking it up for the first time.
  • King Mook: All of the bosses except for the Guardians are stronger versions of an existing enemy: Gronk is a stronger goblin, Big Chunk is a huge golem, and Chief is an elite villager. Even Bob is a gigantic version of the Wyverns.
  • LOL, 69: The maximum stack count for all items is 69.
  • Loophole Abuse: The villagers will aggro if you open the Chief's Chest, but not if you break it, meaning you can loot it for free as long as you're careful not to axe a villager by accident while claiming your prize.
  • Magic Mushroom: They come in three colors, each restoring the respective stat when eaten (red for HP, yellow for hunger, purple for stamina), and can be cooked into a soup that has amplified effects. There's also the rarer, multicolored Slurbon Shrooms that restore all three at once.
  • Power Crystal: Five of them, each held by one of the Guardians, are needed to power the ship.
  • Rare Random Drop: All bosses have one or more rare drops that can be used to craft some of the game's Infinity +1 Sword equipment. Some enemies also have similar rare drops, but these are used for less powerful equipment.
  • Ridiculously Fast Construction: Once you've crafted building objects, you can place them down instantly.
  • Rocket-Tag Gameplay: The game starts being this once you get into later days. A proper weapon and build will slice through everything short of the Final Boss in seconds, but even basic goblins can do enough damage to one-shot an armored player, especially on Gamer difficulty.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The rare Night Blade is a near carbon copy of the Night Sky Sword from Sword Art Online, which its description lampshades further. The achievement for getting it is also called "The Black Swordsman", depicting a Muck avatar dressed up as Kirito.
    • The achievement for killing 1000 goblins is called "Goblin Slayer", with the icon mimicking the titular Slayer's single glowing eye.
  • Super-Persistent Predator: There is no limit on the aggro of enemies, meaning that once engaged, enemies will continue chasing you to the literal ends of the earth until you die or they do. In multiplayer, although other players can sometimes draw aggro if they're nearby if an enemy's target is killed, they will immediately beeline towards the closest target no matter the distance separating them, leading to events such as hordes of enemies traversing the whole island to kill someone who was minding their own business up until then.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: Attacking any of the friendly villagers (or opening their Chief's Chest) will cause the whole settlement to turn hostile and try to kill you instead of selling you goods, upon which you are free to (and in fact must to prevent them from hounding you forever) wipe them all out. Although the villagers aren't much stronger than the average enemies you find in the wild, the real punishment is that it deprives you of a valuable source of items that would often let you skip steps in progression.
  • Wave-Motion Gun: The Guardians' signature attack. It can't be shaken off and will almost always kill you if it connects, leaving the only real option as hiding behind terrain or building your own shelter.
  • Wolfpack Boss: There is no limit to how many bosses can be active at once, meaning this can happen if you're brave (or foolish) enough to summon multiple at once or get supremely unlucky as later-day totems have a chance to just spawn 3 bosses on you at once. Later on, bosses will start spawning as commonly as regular enemies, resulting in this happening every single night.