Mika and The Witch’s Mountain is a beautiful homage to Ghibli, but with a delivery loop that overstays its welcome.
Considering my experience with past Chibig games before delving into the details of Mika and The Witch’s Mountain is worthwhile. Many Chibig games have interesting ideas for concepts but fail miserably in bringing those ideas to life, especially in terms of creating engaging and busy environments.
For this reason, I did not view Summer in Mara as an adventure but rather as a never-ending fetch quest. And though it was a passable platformer overall, Koa And The Five Pirates of Mara suffered from a lack of originality due to its heavy reliance on references to Summer in Mara.
Now, we have Mika and The Witch’s Mountain. The game’s stunningly minimalistic but visually stunning cutscenes, reminiscent of Studio Ghibli, had me on the hook from the beginning. When I first saw it on Steam’s store page, my immediate thought was that it echoed Kiki’s Delivery Service but in a gaming form. The opening movie scene’s blatant use of that style made it more apparent.
Suppose imitation is considered the most genuine way of expressing admiration. In that case, the game praises the great 1989 picture in a manner that is sufficient to show proper respect without sacrificing its own distinctiveness.
Mika scales to the peak of the witch’s mountain to meet an elderly witch and explains that she is here to attend magic school and become a witch herself. This establishes the setting for the rest of the narrative. The old witch replies by hurling Mika off the mountaintop, yikes, and then stipulates that she would speak to her again, only if she can return. The end goal is to achieve that.
Upon touching down, rather horribly because of the old crone’s action, Mika’s broom breaks. In no world could she use it again to ascend to the summit. That being said, why not secure a job for its repair? Working for a delivery company turns out to be the job for Mika.
The plot revolves around Mika’s realization that being around kind people is more valuable than her ambition to be a witch. On top of that, she may have changed her mind about spending time with the cranky old witch up there.
Despite some solid storytelling from the main plot, the film spends the majority of its three to four hours focusing on the anecdotes of its characters, such as a painter searching for his inspiration, a fisherman afraid to leave his elderly father behind, and an ice cream stand owner trying out some crazy new flavors.
Although its current short period makes some of the arcs seem out of nowhere and, in a handful of instances, missing a satisfactory closure, one of the key traits of Mika and The Witch’s Mountain is its concentration on more personal tales.
Riding a broom has its special allure, even if it seems like just another fetch quest simulator as an initial impression. But it does inevitably revert to the repetitious cycle characteristic of Chibig games, which is still unpleasant.
The landscape is surprisingly expansive for a Chibig game, with many terrains, secret caverns, and even environmental objects that help mobility. As you go through Mika and The Witch’s Mountain, you will depend on the many horizontal and vertical wind tunnels you will come across. These will be especially helpful when your broom cannot do much more than glide downwind.
Some missions become imaginative, like the one where you have to extinguish the fire of a burning airliner by soaking sponges in water. Regrettably, such instances are few. The mission structure becomes the central concern at this point. Every day, you go around the island picking up and dropping off things and usually use the same routes each time.
The game is already on the shorter spectrum, and this design only makes it longer, pointlessly. The alarming rate at which the game gets boring calls attention to the necessity of a better structure of delivery mechanics to maintain enthusiasm.
Considering the broom’s inherent mobility is perhaps Mika and The Witch’s Mountain’s biggest selling point, it is obviously well executed. It takes some time to get used to, but I enjoyed it once I felt comfortable handling it.
A new ability to leap, magical gates to increase momentum, or a speed boost are among the features introduced with each upgrade. It adds a little spice and helps to keep things interesting.
Nevertheless, there are moments when you feel the missing potential of the game when you can only stay airborne for a short while and seldom fly higher than a few feet off the Earth’s surface. It is often thought that witches soar high in the sky rather than hover near the ground.
You may discover certain collectible items throughout the region of Mika and The Witch’s Mountain that serve as a new currency, letting you purchase broomstick charms and outfits. And yet, as far as I observed, they had no practical use.
My true appreciation goes out to the fact that there Is a wide range of package guidelines. By way of example, you will need to steer clear of water if there are some packages you cannot allow to get wet. Be cautious not to crash since other ones probably cannot accept harm.
Countless times, I dipped things into the water by mistake that should not have been wet. Likewise, I was entangled in those wind tunnels and pounded my parcels against walls until they were completely damaged or shattered. You know, the sort of stuff FedEx likes to do for fun.
All the main packages can take somewhere between one and three hits. I found the hit detection to be a little off because I could not quite tell how it worked. It looks simple, but it went off at odd times, or sometimes it did not.
Still, I became used to it and moved from delivery to delivery. I improved in timing my use of a leap or boost to create a fast path ahead while maintaining the quality of my packages. And in a personal achievement kind of sense, this was fulfilling to accomplish.
Additionally, throughout Mika and The Witch’s Mountain, followers of the Chibig world are sure to delight in discovering Easter eggs and recognizing characters from the previous games in the series.
The third act was when I sensed the monotony setting in. As I embarked on the same voyage for the fifteenth or twentieth time, my enthusiasm for the game faded after its first few hours. I began to wonder whether it had any hidden surprises I had yet to discover. I was basically delivering between four and five characters at best.
I will not pretend that the game’s increasing runtime is intriguing, but completionists may like having less to do since the game is so short. Playing for short periods will help you escape getting restless, I think. The town has that barren, lifeless vibe you get from many Chibig games—a lack of personalities and other interactive activities that would normally liven things up.
Visually, the game is quite charming. It embraces the cartoonish style we’ve come to expect from Chibig, and the character models generally look good. Parts of Mika and The Witch’s Mountain’s terrain are strangely drab and desolate, suggesting a deeper connection to the story—but in the present iteration of the game, they serve only as an unattractive area to fly over.
Although the creators have acknowledged certain performance concerns in the early access area of the Steam store page, I believe they are underestimating their abilities. I had a brief dip in the framerate that lasted only three seconds on my setup. Plus, the game features amazing support for ultrawide displays, which is always a nice touch.
Mika and The Witch’s Mountain features incredibly good music. However, if I had to choose one gripe, it would sometimes go dead for extended periods of time, leaving me with nothing except background noise and the sometimes foreboding sound of wind tunnels. At least it occurs fairly often; I’m hoping this will be fixed in a patch, but it is not a dealbreaker until then.
The audio design is simply lacking. Chibig has struggled in this area previously; it’s especially clear now. If the environment is not dynamic, the sound design should help bring it to life. Alas, that is most certainly not the case.
Given its early access, I found the idea behind Mika and The Witch’s Mountain appealing, but the implementation falls well short. The quest structure is repetitious, and the world seems dead with inhabitants who fail to engage the player.
Still, Mika and The Witch’s Mountain was brought to life in a manner that almost fully realized its great graphics, amazing music, and sensible concept. If you appreciate the Chibig world and ignore its flaws, you might still have fun here, particularly with the returning characters from past games.
