Dumb Ways to Die 4 Review

Lamebrained Legumes

The Beans are back! And once again it’s up to you to save them from themselves. Play cartoonishly macabre minigames and prevent the Beans’ reckless demise in Dumb Ways to Die 4. Tap, swipe and tilt your way to safety in over 70 perilous minigames in this fast-paced action/puzzle game from PlaySide Studios. Find out if you have what it takes to rescue the Beans and rebuild the city of Beanville.

Welcome to Beanville

For those unfamiliar with the Dumb Ways to Die franchise, the games feature a species of Minion-like creatures called Beans. Much like the yellow critters, they’re mischievous and a little dim-witted. Ok, actually a lot dim-witted. Each Bean has a different design and ability. The Beans constantly find themselves constantly in danger thanks to a lack of common sense and an overabundance of curiosity.

That’s where you come in. In order to save the adorable citizens from certain demise, you’ll need to select a Bean and complete a gamut of fast-paced minigames. Players can choose between two dozen Beans, all with unique abilities. Dumb Ways to Die 4’s minigames feature at least one of the franchise’s characters and give players ten or fewer seconds to complete their brief missions. Some of these tasks include pulling teeth from a crocodile’s gaping maw, roasting marshmallows on the horns of an antlered Bean and revving up tires before leaping across a chasm (á la Thelma and Louise).

You’ll have three lives to amass a high score, with the option of resurrecting one of your Beans by watching an ad. After each minigame, you’ll see a summary of your performance, including random buffs and penalties to your score. By my estimation, these buffs and penalties trigger randomly and usually serve to your benefit. At the end of your run, you’ll receive coins (10% of your total score) for your valiant efforts. Use these coins to purchase landforms, buildings, animals and decorations to rebuild the areas of Beanville. Each of Beanville’s four areas contain three or four suburbs, and require players to purchase seven or eight decorations to progress to the next suburb. With the game’s quirky, colorful environments, I found myself eager to earn more coins, anxiously awaiting what I’d unlock next.

Destined to Die

While most of Dumb Ways to Die 4’s directions are pretty clear, you may find yourself struggling to intuit exactly how to perform the required actions. This means you’ll often face a small learning curve for minigames after their introduction. Sometimes I failed to fully grasp the means of carrying out required tasks, despite instructions. For example, the Piranha Pool Party minigame instructs players to flick piranhas away from a floating Bean. I assumed this meant that tapping the piranha would shoo it away. However, after several failed attempts, I discovered it meant swiping in the direction from which they swam. Usually, this learning curve equates to the second or third attempt, but also means added frustration in faster levels.

There were also moments where it felt like the game purposefully tanked my potential by giving me shorter timeframes and harder tasks. This usually happened during my higher-scoring playthroughs, which means this might be a built-in feature to limit progression and drive ad-viewing for free-to-play players.

Speaking of ads, like most free-to-play games, Dumb Ways to Die 4 employs ad breaks. These occur every three minigames and often require players to interact with playable ads for other mobile games. Obviously, this can be annoying, since it frequently interrupts longer playthroughs. Should players get fed up with the persistent intrusions, they can shell out $1.99 to go ad-free. While it might help in the long-run to purchase the game outright, I found the breaks tolerable and saved myself a couple of bucks.

Stupid Fun

While recurring ads and small learning curves hampered my play temporarily, Dumb Ways to Die 4 never failed to deliver sheer fun. Minigames result in snappy and satisfying solutions and always deliver madcap humor. Even failure feels like a treat, discovering how wildly uncanny the Bean’s demise might be. Heads explode, bodies ignite and piranhas devour, however, the game never gets too graphic. Yes, you’ll witness the occasional blood splatter, but it’s all in cartoonish fun. That said, I’d keep Dumb Ways to Die 4 out of the hands of younger players. No sense in potentially putting deadly ideas into their heads (like sticking forks in toasters).

If you love darkly witty humor and fast-paced puzzles, Dumb Ways to Die 4’s got you covered with its vast library of minigames, unique areas to decorate and adorable, yet dimwitted, cast of characters. I guess it really is true what they say—Beans really are good for your heart.