Mabinogi Mobile has a wide range of side games. Much like a board game you pull out of a dusty drawer once in a while and end up enjoying far more than expected, these side activities can easily make you lose track of time once you give them a shot.

Some of these side games are only available for a limited time.

​

This time, I wanted to share my impressions after personally trying the recently added 'Flower Pig Commotion' and 'Bomb Reading the Room Challenge'.

Flower Pig Commotion

Flower Pig Commotion is a four-player game where the goal is to avoid the flower pig and collect the most coins.

​

Pressing the 'Go to Game' button starts matchmaking immediately. What surprised me when I tried it was just how popular it seemed—the moment I hit the button, four players were matched and the game began right away.

All players start with 15 coins, and more coins are scattered across the floor at regular intervals.

​

Just move close enough, and they are collected automatically.

The flower pig randomly targets one player and unleashes various attacks. It might charge in a straight line or leap up and slam down, and sometimes a second one appears so that two attack patterns are active at once. If you get hit, you drop some of the coins you were carrying.

​

Question mark boxes also appear from time to time. Move close and pick one up, and you receive a random item, which can be used with the F1 key on PC. Since you can only carry one at a time, it is best to use it as soon as you get it and then pick up the next one.

Most items are designed to disrupt other players. They can knock opponents away with a shockwave, briefly stun them, or even launch a grenade.

​

The flower pig's own attacks are fairly slow, so they are not too difficult to avoid, and it is even possible to drag them toward other players. Item attacks, by contrast, are much harder to predict, so once the match reaches the mid to late game, it is better to keep some distance from the other players and secure your own space.

The more coins you have, the greater the risk of losing a large chunk all at once when you get hit. It creates both the thrill of a comeback and the tension of trying to protect what you have, and that may well be why matchmaking feels so fast.

Bomb Reading the Room Challenge

Bomb Reading the Room Challenge is a four-player co-op game, unlike Flower Pig Commotion. It comes in three difficulty settings: Beginner, Hard, and Very Hard. Perhaps because the player pool is split across those difficulties, matchmaking takes a little longer here, but even then I was usually matched within 1 to 2 minutes.

The game consists of 5 rounds on Beginner, 10 on Hard, and 15 on Very Hard, and each round requires the team to clear one puzzle.

The rules are simple. Each of the four players has to stand on a different safe block with no trap.

You need to move quickly before the bomb goes off, but if two or more players step onto the same block while moving, the round fails.

​

That need to watch one another and move accordingly is the core idea of the game, and the reason it is called 'Bomb Reading the Room Challenge.'

​

Even if you fail, you do get another chance, but your score drops accordingly. To earn the maximum score of 1500 points, you have to clear Very Hard without a single failure. There is a ranking system, but the rewards are not especially substantial, so there is no real need to stress over it.

After trying it for myself, what I enjoyed most was the progression from everyone fumbling at first without fully grasping the rules to gradually finding the rhythm and moving together in sync. It only lasts around 2 to 5 minutes, but it created a much stronger sense of connection than mindlessly running dungeons. By the time it ended, I even felt slightly reluctant to part ways.

Wrapping Up

Flower Pig Commotion and Bomb Reading the Room Challenge will be available until Wednesday, June 24. On June 11, another side game called Color Match Survival is also scheduled to open.

​

They are not essential content by any means, but the item rewards are fairly worthwhile, and they also offer a different kind of fun along with a brief but memorable sense of connection, so they are well worth trying at least once.