Mole Mania

There are games that their own creator speaks of as a gem nobody played — and Mole Mania is exactly that case. Behind it stands a name that draws in every fan the moment they see it on the box: Shigeru Miyamoto, one of the few titles he personally oversaw the production of, and yet it stayed in the background of his fame.

You play as a mole named Muddy, who sets out to save his family, and the whole ingenious mechanic rests on a single idea: the world has two planes. You move both on the surface and underground, digging freely between them. This opens up spatial puzzles you will not find elsewhere — you push large black balls, tunnel under them from one side to the other, dig passages beneath obstacles and surface exactly where the solution requires. Switching between „above“ and „below“ changes from a simple trick into a clever logical tool that the game gradually develops into surprisingly complex challenges.

Game Boy R&D1 did meticulous work: the controls are brisk, the presentation adorable, and each new area adds a variable that changes how you think about space. It is not a race against time or a test of reflexes, but a calm, clever challenge that rewards planning and experimentation.

So why does almost no one know the game? It released late in the life cycle of the original Game Boy, when attention was already turning to its color successors, and it never got a big marketing campaign or a sequel to keep its name in the spotlight. Miyamoto himself repeatedly mentioned it as one of his favorite underrated works — and that is a recommendation that carries weight.

Today Mole Mania is exactly the kind of hidden treasure that makes it worth digging through the Game Boy catalog to the very end.

Why play it: A clever two-plane puzzle game from the workshop of Miyamoto himself; an underrated gem offering calm, cunning puzzles and the magic of „how did nobody play this.“