Mika and the Witch’s Mountain by developers Chibig S.L.U., Nukefist and publisher Chibig—PC (Steam) preview written by Valerie with a copy provided by
the publisher.
Estimated reading
time: 5 minutes
Presses the ‘R’ key to land Mika, the main character, in this wonderful 3D fantasy adventure game by ChiBig Studio. I had been waiting since March 2023 for this game and Mika and The Witch’s Mountain finally landed in my lap! Since this lovely relaxing game is still in Early Access I’ll cover the tonne of fun I had as well as the little grievances that popped up during gameplay. Yes, I did finish this game that didn’t overstay its welcome clocking in at five and a bit hours. Yes, you caught me. I love doing achievements, so I wandered a little to get them! *Laughs*
In this relaxing adventure you play as Mika and your goal is to get back up to the top of The Witch’s Mountain, where you were until recently, to Olagari’s home, the head witch, to apply for apprenticeship with her. Mika wants to be a witch just like her mother and she even has a letter of recommendation! Unfortunately, Olagari doesn’t accept the letter and shoves Mika off the mountain. Mika’s broom doesn’t survive the fall so the first person Mika meets is Allegra who offers to fix her broken broom for an amount of money. Mika doesn’t have any money and Allegra suggests she take the open position as a delivery person.
Yay! I get to ride a broom! Okay, that’s not the main draw of this game for me, but it’s certainly an awesome plus! This game hits all the boxes for relaxing in content: to collect items, money to earn, people to meet, places to discover, and more! The 3D art style in its cartoon-y fashion is soothing and can sometimes feel like you’re reliving your childhood over again but through a different lens.
On this island is the town of Orilla where the next person you meet is Greff, the owner of the Orilla Town Delivery Company. Abrupt and brusque, he meets all the requirements of an upstanding taskmaster with a few not so nice traits that keeps Mika on her toes to better herself through completing her deliveries with as few bumps and bruises as possible. Those 'bumps & bruises' are getting the package wet, hitting the package, and sometimes a timer which I'll address a little later.
The quest and information screens are like a notebook to keep tabs on Mika's progress. In here you can see your new broom's statistics, your goals, and the extras in your backpack. There are also screens of the delivery card, the map of Mont Gaun that you are given by Greff, and a detailed diagram of a controller with labelled buttons of their corresponding actions. I'm a keyboard and mouse gamer, so I was happy to discover that I can use the WSAD keys, a couple of other keys for turning pages, the Enter key, and mouse to navigate through the game.
There's also tracking of the outfits you can get, broom trails, and tarot cards which was also a plus for me. Oh yes, and chocolate! Well, in game chocolate, but yummy as that's a definite addiction in real life!
So I had mentioned collectibles and here you can see a treasure to collect and what you can purchase in the store. It is accessed here at this monument that you can see in the screenshot on the right. There are charms and outfits you can get too.
Remember I said I would get to my grievances later? Well, here they are. Because I also wear one of the editor hats, I found some text that didn't fit, or words that should be something else, and missing letters in words. There also isn't a save button in the game to do your own saves, so when I loaded up the game later on I found myself in a spot I hadn't gotten to yet.
When flying on the broom it very much felt like the mechanics in Spyro the dragon when I played that game. It took a bit of getting used to and finally evened out when I relaxed into the music of the game to get from place to place. Almost like the slalom on a ski slope (which I've never done, but have observed plenty watching on tv or that one trip with friends who all loved skiing), smooth and continuous left to right and right to left in a straight line to your destination.
Score: N/A
